rlif £1*|$* 


1 
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Class . 

Book 

GqEynghtN?- 



COEffilGHT DEPOSIT. 



;- 






No. I. 



Ten Cents. 







Pioneers of Southern nurture. 

Much has been written of " the recent 
ment in Southern Literature," but little has _-en 
said of those pioneers who wrought while litera- 
ture brought neither fame nor remuneration. With 
love for literature and love for the South, these 
toiled upward in the night. They deserve more 
than a mere passing notice. As precursors of the 
" new day " they snould not be forgotten by their 
own people. For some years this writer has gath- 
ered material covering the period preceding and 
immediately subsequent to the war, and now em- 
bodies some of the results in a series of ten book- 
lets, hoping that these may not be without value to 
those, who cherish interest in the history of South- 
ern life and thought, as well as to those" engaged in 
the work of education. 

The booklets will be Issued at intervals under 
the following titles: 

No. i. A Glance at the Field. Here a Tale; 
There a Song. 

No. 2. Paul Hamilton Hayne, Poet Laureate of 
the South. 

No. 3. Dr. Frank O. Ticknor, the Southern Lyr- 
ic Poet; and Henry Timrod, the Unfortu- 
nate Singer. 

No. 4. William Gilmore Simms : The Novelist, 
the Poet. 

No. 5. John P. Kennedy, John Esten Cooke, and 
Other Southern Novelists. 

No. 6. Edgar Allan Poe : A Genius in Story and 
Song. 

No. 7. War Poets of the South. Singers on 
Fire. 

No. 8. Singers inVarious Keys: John R. Thomp- 
son, James Barron Hope, Henry Lynden 
Flash, and Others. 

No. 9. Southern Humorists : Longstreet, Bald- 
win, Hooper, W. T. Thompson, Davy Crock- 
ett, and Others. 

No. 10. Political Writers and Historians. 

Such division has been made as will in some 
measure cover the entire field from the earliest 
times until about 1S70, when the leading magazines 
were thrown open to Southern writer*. 

A bibliography of the writers considered will be 
included in the hist booklet of the series. 

Price, 10c per Number, Postpaid. 

5jar6oo dc Smith, ffpents, 
2Vns/ivi77e, Tenn. 



. high r, 






- Ar 









7 

Li 

sU ©lance at tbe #iel&. 



Thus have I walkt a way less way, with 

uncouth pace, 
Which yet no Christian man did ever 

trace: 
But yet I know this not affects the mind, 
Which eares doth heare: as that which 

eyes doe finde. 

"•HOSE words seem quaint 
enough to have been written 
in the days of Shakespeare, 
and so they were. Capt. John 
Smith had just completed a perilous 
voyage of discovery, before which 
the fabled adventures of Jason 
grew pale. In three months, with a 
few companions in an open boat, 
this last knight-errant of the world 
had explored the vast shores and 
inlets of the Chesapeake, with its 
tributary rivers. Not only that, 
but accurate maps with full descrip- 
tions of country, natives, plants, and 

1 






B Glance at tbe field. 

animals had been made. Nor was 
the record a bare statement of 
facts ; but the narrative is of poetic 
beauty and perennial freshness, 
and flows on lucid as the magnifi- 
cent rivers which flow into that 
wonderful bay. 

When Capt. John Smith's " Gen- 
erall Historie o f Virginia, New 
England, and the Summer Isles " 
appeared in London, in 1624, Vir- 
ginia had been the inspiration of a 
dozen or more books, several of 
which had been written on the 
banks of the James. Before the 
colony was two decades old, within 
its limits Sandys had completed the 
translation of twelve books of Ovid, 
done so well as to reach eight edi- 
tions in a short time, and to bring 
the translator high praise from both 
Dryden and Pope. In the midst of 
suffering from starvation and dan- 
ger from savages, five books had 
been written in the huts of James- 
town before five years had passed. 

2 



U ©lance at tbe jfielO. 

Verily everything seemed to to- 
ken the advent of a new nativity for 
literature. In England this was an 
age of large thoughts and larger 
expectations. Every snowy sail 
rising above the curve of the sea 
might bear the news of more splen- 
did discoveries, or be freighted with 
richer treasures, than all the dreams 
of the Indies. The realities sur- 
passed the old romances. The 
Caliphate of Haroun-al-Raschid had 
been revived with increased splen- 
dor and extent. A new drama 
might fall from the pen of Shakes- 
peare any day, marked by that 
largeness of mind and universality 
of ideas in which he surpassed all 
who had gone before, 

In this age of Shakespeare and 
Ben Jonson, John Smith was mak- 
ing the beginning of a new litera- 
ture in the wilds of America; nor 
in shrewdness o f discernment, 
quaintness of expression, and large- 
ness of view was that beginning in the 

3 



21 ©lance at tbe field. 

least unworth}' of the age and the En- 
gland to which the writer belonged. 

Moses Coit Tyler says : " The 
first Hspings of American literature 
were heard along the sands of the 
the Chesapeake and near the gur- 
gling tides of the James River, at 
the very time when the firmament 
of English literature was all ablaze 
with the light of her full-orbed and 
most wonderful writers, the wits, 
the dramatists, scholars, orators, 
singers, philosophers, who formed 
that incomparable group of Titanic 
men gathered in London during the 
earlier years of the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; when the very air of London 
must have been electric with the 
daily words of those immortals, 
whose casual talk upon the pave- 
ment by the street side was a coin- 
age of speech richer, more virile, 
more expressive, than has been 
known on this planet since the great 
days of Athenian poetry, eloquence, 
and mirth." 

4 



U <3iance at tbe 3fieID. 

Raleigh, who more than any 
other man, gave North America to 
the English, had gone forth in al- 
most royal magnificence, to make 
conquests from Spain and to en- 
large discoveries in the new world, 
and had returned to use tongue and 
pen to foster colonization in Virgin- 
ia. His plan failed, his colony per- 
ished, and himself fell into disfavor, 
going finally to prison and, as one 
has said, to " damnable death," 
yet his dearest scheme was not des- 
tined finally to fail. Hakluyt, Gos- 
nold, Smith, and others arose to re- 
peat the venture under better aus- 
pices and in a more favorable locality. 

Capt. John Smith, governor by 
divine right of leadership, like Sir 
Walter Raleigh, aspired to litera- 
ture as well as arms and coloniza- 
tion. Smith saw at once the possi- 
bility of a new and larger England, 
and at a subsequent time named a 
portion of the continent accordingly. 
Within a year he had given the 

5 



a (Blance at tbe ffielfc. 

world his " True Relation," though 
that is a small part of the title. In 
another year this man, whose inde- 
fatigable courage and untiring in- 
dustry is one of the wonders of a 
wonderful age, had made two dan- 
gerous voyages, in which were 
secured the information published 
in his " Mappe." 

The first writings of any country 
deal with exploits and discoveries. 
Cadmus brought letters to Greece, 
and straightway there is a history 
of his sowing the dragon's teeth, 
and the conflict of the armed men 
who sprang up in such bountiful 
profusion. 

In the oldest English poem 
known, " Widsith," the " Far Trav- 
eler," "told his tale, unlocked his 
word-hoard," and that far-away tale 
was of travel and sight-seeing. 
Naturally, the first writings of 
both Virginia and Massachusetts 
would be descriptive and historical ; 
on the one hand, portraying the 

6 



B Glance at tbe ^ielo. 

country to those at home ; on the 
other, recording the hardships and 
dangers incident to the enterprise 
that those within the veil of the 
future might know how great the 
work to find the "gods a home in 
Latium," and build the "walls of 
high-towering Rome." 

Within a few months after writing 
the " True Relation" Smith sent a 
trenchant reply t o certain com- 
plaints from the London Company. 
Tyler calls the style of this " Hot- 
spur Rhetoric." It was an embryo 
declaration of independence, Amer- 
ica's first experience in talking back 
at England. He told them freely 
of their mistaken policy, and of the 
colony's need for men who would 
work ; but with these sober words 
was mingled hope for the future. 

The " Susan Constant," the 
" Godspeed," and the " Discovery," 
bearing the first settlers, had sailed 
up the James in April, when the 
dogwoods and redbuds were re- 

7 



B ©lance at tbe jfteU). 

splendent, and numerous vines were 
festooned with blooms. Smith had 
written : M Heaven and earth never 
agreed better to frame a place for 
man's habitation." Here was the 
original Brother Jonathan, whose 
descriptions of his country glowed 
with the fervor of a Fourth of July, 
but whose retort to those who spoke 
him ill was not a mere mincing of 
phrases. 

To Smith belongs the honor of 
giving the name to New England, 
and even to Plymouth, where the pil- 
grims landed. While he published 
several works, most of them were 
written in London, and hence do 
not strictly belong t o America, 
though almost all glowed with one 
theme : Virginia. 

Larger space has been given to 
Smith, since he, more than any 
other, with seerlike vision and hap- 
py discernment of right means, laid 
the foundation of American litera- 
ture and American greatness. 
8 



% (Blance at tbe afielD* 

In 1610 William Strachey wrote 
his vivid description of a storm and 
wreck among the Bermudas, which 
has been supposed to have suggest- 
ed the " Tempest " to Shakespeare. 

Among others who wrote in 
those first years, were George Per- 
cy, the brilliant John Pory, Alexan- 
der Whitaker, with his " Good 
News from Virginia," besides 
George Sandys, and his translations 
of Ovid mentioned before. 

Such was the auspicious begin- 
ning, but it was not to continue. 
As the people became more firmly 
fixed in their new home the desire 
to communicate with the old world 
grew less. The dangers and hard- 
ships engrossed their attention more 
fully as they grew to realize more 
of the vast magnitude of the enter- 
prise. Years spent in fighting In- 
dians, clearing land, and building 
homes damped the early literary ar- 
dor. 

In New England there were so 
1* 9 



B <3lance at tbe fffelo. 

many diversities of religious belief 
that in the vain endeavor to settle 
these many books were written at 
quite an early date, but it was a 
long time before any real literature 
appeared. Although a printing 
press had been set up at Harvard in 
1639, from which many volumes 
had been issued, yet no work of 
even lighter theology was issued 
until 1662, when the "Day of 
Doom," a book of verse, appeared. 

During the first hundred years 
New England produced " Mother 
Goose's Melodies," a few histories 
and books of statecraft, with in- 
numerable works on various phases 
of duty and theology, with here and 
there a stray poem — a few humor- 
ous. 

Through the instrumentalitv of 
James Blair the foundation of Wil- 
liam and Mary College was laid at 
Williamsburg, in Virginia, in 1693. 
By his work of half a century as 
President, much was done to give 
10 



% <3lance at tbe JuelO, 

intellectual force to the people — to 
prepare for that preeminence which 
Virginia took during the Revolu- 
tion and the first quarter of century 
of the government. 

Harvard and William and Mary- 
were the two centers from which 
were shaped the leaders of the Rev- 
olution. 

It takes towns and cities to foster 
literature. New England had these 
earlier than the South, Virginia was 
especially unfortunate in that direc- 
tion. Jamestown perished, Wil- 
liamsburg never grew, Richmond 
did not attain much size until long 
after Northern cities had become 
centers of books and intelligence. 

If Jamestown had been located at 
the falls of the James instead of 
upon a low malarial peninsula, how 
different might have been the litera- 
ry history of the South ! An author 
may dwell apart at " Abbotsf ord " or 
" Rydal Mount," but his works need 
to be issued from some center of 
11 



a ©lance at tbe aftelc\ 

population and literature. Indeed, 
most successful literary workers 
must at times feel the heart beat of 
the world. 

Harvard, with its printing press, 
was at Boston, but the South lo- 
cated her colleges in the small 
towns, and thus kept many of her 
most scholarly men away from the 
people and the press. Moreover, in 
the old regime at the South, the 
forum was more attractive to intel- 
lectual men than the Aonion mount. 
There was many an Achilles in 
courage, but no Homer sang his 
feats in arms. 

In New England the people set- 
tled in towns, and lectures and libra- 
ries were in vogue almost from the 
beginning, but in the South the 
farm was the center of social life. 
Culture and wit there were, but 
these shone in the homes, not in 
books. 

Before the war of 1861 many 
planters had fine libraries, but often 
12 



B Glance at tbe afielfc* 

these contained nothing more re- 
cent than the Elizabethan poets 
and the Waverley novels ; and woe 
betide the writer who fell below 
these. A literature must come full 
fledged ; it dare not show the crude- 
ness of a beginning. There was 
no city so superior to others as to 
constitute a center of culture and 
learning for the entire South. Bal- 
timore, Richmond, Charleston, Lou- 
isville, New Orleans, and a few 
other points were local centers, but 
from none of these could there em- 
anate a review which would be ac- 
cepted by the others as an authori- 
tative canon of criticism. Whole- 
some criticism is necessary to lift 
literature above the passions and fol- 
lies of the passing hour. For lack 
of this, amateur writers of poor 
ability reveled in praise generous 
enough for genius — praise given by 
incompetent friends through the col- 
umns of local newspapers. No 
higher praise could be given the 
13 



B Glance at tbe JfieR). 



best, hence all came to be classed 
together, and few of the brightest 
intellects were willing to acknowl- 
edge a deliberate literary intent. 
Some of the brightest gems of 
thought were given in conversation 
and private letters. There were no 
Southern publishers, and the proud- 
spirited Southerner asked no favors 
with a chance of being denied, hence 
the North received few offers of 
Southern manuscript. Broad and 
genial humor has always been 
a Southern characteristic. Mark 
Twain was born in Missouri of 
Kentucky parents, but long before 
his day Col. William Byrd, of 
Westover, Va., had shown a raci- 
ness which would set modern ears 
atingle. His diary, kept when he 
ran the dividing line between North 
Carolina and Virginia, was left un- 
published a hundred years, but was 
published in 1 841, and is now spoken 
of as one of the most remarkable pro- 
ductions of early American writers, 
14 



% <3lance at tbe 3ftelD. 

and will keep his name alive when 
it has been forgotten that he found- 
ed Richmond and Petersburg. 

Sometimes humorous productions 
spring up where there is a dearth of 
all other literature. No theory of 
the origin and growth of literature 
can be produced which will not be 
set at naught by the advent of some 
genius at some point barren of ex- 
pectations. The first book printed 
west of the Alleghanies was issued 
at Pittsburg in 1793. The author 
was H. H. Brackenridge, born in 
Scotland, but brought up on the 
border of Maryland, in which State 
he taught school for a number of 
years. He afterwards went to Pitts- 
burg, and at first edited the United 
States Magazine, but subsequently 
practiced law. His book circulated 
mainly in the South and West, and 
" filled the place of i Don Quixote ' on 
the banks of the Ohio and along 
the Mississippi." This racy book 
was written in good English, and 
15 



& Glance at tbe 3fielO. 

told of the adventures of a militia 
captain and his raw Irish servant as 
they rode about the country. Capt. 
Farrago found his servant so popular 
as to be restrained with difficulty 
from becoming a clergyman, an In- 
dian chief, a member of the Legisla- 
ture, of the philosoj^hical society, and 
of Congress. This red-headed San- 
cho Panza was appointed exciseman, 
and at once lost his popularity, and 
was tarred and feathered before he 
could begin to collect taxes on the 
products of the still. Most of the 
writings of a literary turn were done 
by men busy with other things — es- 
pecially lawyers. One case is nota- 
ble, since the lawyer did not even 
acknowledge his fugitive verse un- 
til others had laid claim to it, and he 
was urged by friends to avow its 
authorship. This was Richard Hen- 
ry Wilde, member of Congress from 
Georgia for several years, begin- 
ning in 1815. The poem is here 
given, and is entitled 
16 



% (Stance at tbe aftelfc* 

My Life Is Like the Summer Rose. 

My life is like the summer rose, 

That opens to the morning skj, 
But ere the shades of evening close 

Is scattered on the ground — to die! 
Yet on the rose's humble bed, 
The sweetest dews of night are shed, 
As if she wept the waste to see — 
But none shall weep a tear for me! 

My life is like the autumn leaf, 

That trembles in the moon's pale ray ; 
Its hold is frail, its date is brief, 

Restless, and soon to pass away! 
Yet, ere that leaf shall fall and fade, 
The parent tree will mourn its shade; 
The winds bewail the leafless tree, 
But none shall breathe a sigh for me. 

My life is like the prints which feet 

Have left on Tampa's desert strand; 
Soon as the rising tide shall beat, 

All trace will vanish from the sand; 
Yet, as if grieving to efface 
All vestige of the human race, 
On that lone shore loud moans the sea; 
But none, alas! shall mourn for me! 

Wilde was the author of a num- 
ber of works, but this poem, which 
had a wide circulation, is about all 
1** 17 



a (Blance at tbe jflclD. 

that remains. Before the war very- 
few persons in America had ever 
relied solely on literature as a means 
of support. As the wheels of the 
train sometimes throw off sparks 
while bearing the heavy burdens of 
trade, so busy men sometimes threw 
off poems and sketches of more than 
ordinary merit. It might as well 
be confessed that literature did not 
present the road to highest honor. 
That was for the statesman. Nor 
was the examjDle of such as tempt- 
ed the Muses very enticing. One 
fee of an attorney might easily 
mean more than a year's work in 
literature, since Poe received five 
hundred and fifty dollars per year 
as editor in his best days, and ob- 
tained ten dollars for the " Raven," 
one of the world's famous poems. 
But after all, literary appreciation in 
a solid sense is a very modern affair. 
Shakespeare did not find it worth 
while to publish, and Milton sold 
" Paradise Lost " for five pounds. 
18 



% ©lance at tbe 3fiel&. 

Lest we of the South should be 
censured more than others, be it re- 
membered that Charles Brockden 
Brown, the prototype of both Poe 
and Hawthorne, died at Philadel- 
phia in 1810, at the age of thirty- 
nine, utterly broken with discour- 
agement, because of lack of inter- 
est on the part of his nation, and 
also that Hawthorne himself, one of 
the world's five greatest novelists, 
was under necessity of sitting at 
the door of politics and eating the 
bread of neglect. When James 
Fenimore Cooper published his first 
novel, he withheld his name, and 
wrote " Precaution : by an English- 
man." 

The South in higher circles had 
some of the spirit of feudal En- 
gland. Neither thought of free 
common schools patronized by all 
the people. Culture was not lack- 
ing in the South. Franklin started 
his Magazine for All the British 
Plantations in America in 1741. 
19 



21 (Mance at tbe #ieU). 

He was obliged to confess that the 
Virginian planters were already pro- 
vided since the Gentlema?i > s Mag- 
azine, the oldest in England, had 
been founded in London ten years 
earlier. Henry Adams in his his- 
tory of the United States during 
the administration of Jefferson, says : 
" The Virginians, at the close of 
the eighteenth century, were infe- 
rior to no class of Americans in the 
sort of education then supposed to 
make refinement." He might have 
said the same of several portions of 
the South. The deficiency in edu- 
cation was in regard to extent, not 
degree. So many young men went 
to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and 
England for education, that Jeffer- 
son was constrained to found the 
University of Virginia. The basis 
of intelligence could not have been 
bad that produced such men as 
Washington, Jefferson, John Mar- 
shall, George Mason, Andrew Jack- 
son, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, 
20 



a ©lance at tbe 3ftelfc. 

Thomas Benton, William Wirt, and 
all those bright stars which have 
made luminous the Southern skies. 
Wherein could these men have 
failed had they found in literature 
their fitting field? According to 
Moses Coit Tyler, to Patrick Hen- 
ry belongs the honor of sounding 
the first effective note for freedom 
which incited to action and unified 
all the colonies. Of political writ- 
ing, Hon. J. Q. Adams says : "What 
could America offer in legal litera- 
ture that rivaled the judicial opin- 
ions of Chief Justice Marshall? 
What political essay equaled the 
severe beauty of George Mason's 
Virginia Bill of Rights? What 
single production of an American 
pen reached the fame of Thomas 
Jefferson's Declaration of Independ- 
ence?" To this it might be added 
that Southern statesmanship wrote 
the constitution, ceded to the Feder- 
al Government the territory of Vir- 
ginia out of which so many States 



& <5lance at tbe Jffelfc, 

were carved, secured Louisiana, 
thus preventing a vast French, or 
more probably British, Empire west 
of the Mississippi. Southern skill 
directed all the land fighting Amer- 
icans care to remember of the war of 
1812, and mainly Southern soldiers 
stormed the bristling heights of 
Mexico. The same region whose 
intellect has been spoken of as fet- 
tered, in the late war furnished sol- 
diers and generals whose fame will 
require all chapters of earth's hero- 
ism to be rewritten. It must not 
be forgotten that many of those 
most prominent on the Northern 
side, including Lincoln himself, 
were from the South. To show 
that the South was intellectually up 
and about on various lines, it is only 
necessary to mention Audubon, the 
prince of ornithologists ; Maury, 
who marked out the highways and 
byways of the seas, discovered the 
Atlantic Plateau for the cable, and 
first proposed the Weather Bureau. 
22 



% (Blance at tbe 3fielo, 

In addition to these, Washington 
Allston, the poet-painter, must not 
be forgotten, nor must J. Marion 
Sims, the great surgeon, who 
pioneered the way in so many in- 
ventions and discoveries. The 
South, then, largely gave to the 
world, and for more than a quarter 
of a century directed, a system of 
government which has largely mod- 
ified the governments of earth, 
which has given to mankind a new 
value of man. 

If the North came with arms 
preaching "All men are created 
equal," remember the South first 
taught this creed. In the forma- 
tive period of the government there 
was produced by Southern men the 
finest body of political writings the 
world ever saw. This filled the de- 
mands — indeed, the necessities — of 
the times. Had those men at that 
time turned their talents to fiction 
or poetry, they would have belittled 
themselves in the eyes of mankind, 
23 



a <5lance at tbe tffelfc. 

They did not write history ; they 
made history. Not only were they 
the actors of the ages, but they 
were the philosophers of humanity. 
Their works can never be forgot- 
ten by the political economist until 
the ages end or self-government ig 
forgotten. Oratory belongs to a 
free people, and the history of 
Southern oratory is the history of 
one of the most splendid periods of 
the world's history. 

We cannot but wish that, while 
there was such activity on other lines, 
some writers should have given in 
song and story the phases of life as 
they passed ; but this much has been 
written to show that this dearth did 
not come from lack of intellectual 
force. When the war brought to- 
gether an audience, the singer burst 
into song ; when oratory ceased to 
have a mission, the romancer came, 
showing the adaptability of the peo- 
ple to varied demands. 

A few things should be remem- 
24 



U 0lance at tbe 3ffelD. 

bered by those who make literature 
not merely the chief, but the only 
adequate measure of intellectual 
greatness. The few short stories 
recently produced by sprightly 
writers do not discredit what has 
gone before. We think of these 
stories, not so much on account of 
their merit, as the hope and promise 
they give for the future — that the 
South may equal or surpass in liter- 
ature what she has done in state- 
craft, war, social culture, and bril- 
liant, but evanescent, oratory. All 
this past has been glanced at to 
show that there is an historical basis 
for such expectation. A few things 
done when literature was hardly a 
pastime gives token and prophecy 
of a great future, if only we build 
well. 

A few efforts were made from 
time to time to establish magazines 
which might in some measure draw 
the best intellect toward literary 
production. These failed not from 
25 



a ©lance at tbe aFfelo. 

lack of intellect to be drawn, but 
from lack of drawing power, mon- 
ey, influence. A liberal price per 
column would soon have worked 
wonders. 

Of these magazines, the South- 
ern Literary Messenger, at Rich- 
mond, was, no doubt, the best, and 
lasted longest. From the da} r s of 
Kennedy and Poe until the war it 
drew to itself the best talent of the 
South and some of the North. 
Among its contributors may be 
found the names of such as Cooke, 
Simms, Hayne, Timrod, Bagby, 
John R. Thompson, James Barron 
Hope, and a long list besides. Bag- 
by and Thompson were both editors. 
Poe made the Messenger, and the 
Messenger made Poe. Charleston 
came next with Legare's Review 
and Ha}me's RusseWs Magazine. 
Both of these did much to make 
Charleston " the Boston of the 
South," which it was once called. 
The Review ran for years, and some 
26 



& ©lance at tbe ffielfc. 

one has said that its editor, Legare, 
just missed being great. Debow 
at New Orleans, Tannehill, and Al- 
bert Roberts at Nashville, attempt- 
ed publications in a somewhat sim- 
ilar vein. The Home Circle and 
the Ladies' Pearl were Church ef- 
forts to give a literary bent to their 
people. Later, D. H. Hill in North 
Carolina, Basil Duke in Louisville, 
and some one else in Baltimore, made 
like efforts to awake what was sup- 
posed to be a dormant interest. 
These were all pioneer ventures 
upon a water without wind. They 
did not supply a long-felt want. 

Some papers fostered literature — 
notably the Louisville Journal, in 
charge of George D. Prentice, him- 
self a poet of no mean degree. 
Collins's " Kentucky " gives selec- 
tions from Amelia Welby, Theodore 
O'Hara, and a score of other poets 
largely called into being by Pren- 
tice. Of these, O'Hara is likely to 
be immortal, since, though a South- 
27 



& <3lance at tbe ftelt*. 

ern soldier, some of his lines from 
" Bivouac of the Dead," stand over 
the gate of the National Cemetery 
at Arlington. 

A great deal of what was written 
in earlier years at New Orleans has 
never come to general view, since 
French was the language employed. 
An examination of Forticr's 
" Louisiana Studies " will surprise 
one in the amount of fairly good 
work done in that State, not to men- 
tion Gayarre's " Histories," which 
must continue to be of increasing 
value as interest increases in the his- 
tory of the Mississippi Valley. 

This booklet cannot be a cata- 
logue o f Southern writers, for 
James Wood Davidson numbered 
the hosts in 1869, and found in the 
South two hundred and forty-one 
living writers — one hundred and 
sixty male, seventy-five female — 
though Ida Raymond found one 
hundred and seventy-six women. 
Of those, two hundred and one had 
28 



21 Glance at tbe 3FieID. 

published books. Where are the 
books? is the question. They had 
written seven hundred and thirty - 
nine volumes. Books are not litera- 
ture. 

Baltimore has been the home of 
two unfortunate, but genuine, poets. 
The first in point of time was Ed- 
ward Coate Pinkney, born in 1802, 
died in 1828. Dying young, he yet 
left some good poetry. His best- 
known poem, "A Health," has this 
for a closing stanza : 

I fill this cup to one made up 

Of loveliness alone, 
A woman of her gentle sex 

The seeming paragon — 
Her health! and would on earth 
there stood 

Some more of such a frame, 
That life might be all poetry, 

And weariness a name. 

His poetry was published in 1825 
in a thin volume of sixty pages. It 
attracted attention at once, and he 
was rated one of the five best poets 
in America. The "Picture Song" 
29 



B <3lance at tbe ffielD. 

is perhaps the best, but is too long- 
to quote. Does Peck give three 
quarters of a century later a better 

Serenade? 

Look out upon the stars, my love, 

And shame them with thine eyes, 
On which, than on the lights above 

There hang more destinies. 
Night's beauty is the harmony 

Of blending shades and light; 
Then, lady, up, look out and be 

A sister to the night! 
Sleep not! thine image wakes for aye 

Within my watching breast; 
Sleep not! from her soft sleep should flee, 

Who robs all hearts of rest. 
Nay, lady, from thy slumbers break, 

And make this darkness gay 
With looks whose brightness well might 
make 

Of darker nights a day. 

Several of the familv have been 
authors and published both prose 
and verse. They took to literature 
as the South Carolina Pinckneys 
[a different name] took to law, ora- 
tory, and diplomacy. 

A roll call of Southern poets 
30 



B (Stance at tbe 3fielD* 

would not omit Wilde, the law-pro- 
fessor and poet; Mirabeau B. La- 
mar, President of the Lone Star Re- 
public, author of the " Daughter o£ 
Mendoza ; " Simms, the poet-nov- 
elist ; Poe, the " unlucky master 
whom disaster followed fast, and 
followed faster ; " Judge A. B. 
Meek, whose ermine could not al- 
together frighten the Muses ; Pren- 
tice, the poet-editor ; St. George 
Tucker, the jurist, who wrote 
" Days of My Youth ; " Francis 
Scott Key, the immortal author of 
" Star - spangled Banner ; " Henry 
R. Jackson, and " The Red Old 
Hills of Georgia;" Albert Pike, 
with his " Mocking Bird " and 
" Hymns to the Gods ; " 0'Hara r 
and the " Bivouac of the Dead ; " 
John R. Thompson, the poet whose 
portrait hangs among the states- 
men of the Old Dominion ; Father 
Ryan, whose " Requiem " will nev- 
er die until forgotten lies the banner 
M which four years made immortal ; '* 
31 



% Glance at tbe 3HelD. 

Timrod, whose story is the most 
pathetic in all literature ; Ticknor, 
the poet-physician, who made " Lit- 
tle Griffin " imperishable ; Paul H. 
Hayne, who lifted high the torch of 
leadership when the days seemed 
too dark for song. Nor could we 
omit that long list whose bugles 
caught the notes of war and thrilled 
them over a palpitating land : Ran- 
dal, Timrod, Flash, Ticknor, and a 
host of others who have woven 
their names in threads of fire. 
Lanier belongs to both the old and 
new period in the South's literary 
development, but mainly to the 
new. 

The novel has been of late growth 
in American literature. The short 
story of recent years has taken the 
place of the three-volume English 
novel, though it has been hinted that 
this is only an interregnum of that 
ponderous production. Cooper has 
been extensively read, but never 
reached the high- water mark of ex- 
32 



H ©lance at tbe afielD. 

cellence. Washington Irving was 
not, strictly speaking, a novelist. 
Hawthorne's fame unfortunately 
did not spread as rapidly as his abil- 
ity warranted. Some one has said 
that the best novel written in the 
South before the war was " Vir- 
ginia Comedians," by John Esten 
Cooke. Be that true or not, Cooke 
did far better work after those fiery 
campaigns in which he took part. 
He was preeminently the war nov- 
elist of the South, and not all of 
his works will perish. Carruthers 
wrote with an historical basis, henCe 
his works at least have interest for 
the student. 

The " Cavaliers " has to do with 
Bacon's Rebellion, and the 
" Knights of the Horseshoe " gives a 
picture of the "Cocked Hat Gen- 
try," with a description of Spots- 
wood's explorations beyond the 
Blue Ridge. Dr. Carruthers wrote 
other novels, but the business did 
not pay, and he went farther south 
3 33 



& <3lance at tbe fftelo. 

and practiced medicine. Hardly 
any works give a better picture of 
colonial days. Cooke was his natu- 
ral successor, as Page has succeeded 
Cooke, each happily improving upon 
his predecessor. 

However, the Tuckers of Virgin- 
ia must not be forgotten. There 
were several, and men of strong 
ability at that. St. George Tucker, 
the stepfather of John Randolph, 
was poet and satirist, as well as law 
commentator ; but George Tucker, 
a relative, likewise a lawyer, was 
the author of the novels " Valley of 
the Shenandoah " and "A Voyage 
to the Moon," besides numerous 
other works, some twenty in all. 
Beverly Tucker, son of St. George, 
and half-brother of John Randolph 
of Roanoke, was the author of 
" The Partisan Leader," which 
made quite a stir in its day ; he also 
wrote " Holcombe," a novel, besides 
several other works. St. George 
H., grandson of St. George, was 
34 



% ©lance at tbe tfielO. 

the author of " Hansford," an his- 
torical novel of the time of Bacon's 
Rebellion. J. P. Kennedy turned 
aside from law and politics long 
enough to write " Swallow Barn," 
" Horseshoe Robinson," " Rob of 
the Bowl," besides the " Life of 
Wirt," and many other things of 
less import. By Kennedy's influ- 
ence Poe became editor of the*S0^M- 
em Literary Messenger. 

William Gilmore Simms, of South 
Carolina, was the Cooper of the 
South ; not only that, but he was 
the Maecenas to the younger writ- 
ers of his day. Hayne, Timrod, 
and others, often met at his house 
to find encouragement and catch in- 
spiration. At "Woodlands," near 
Charleston, he kept open house. 
Bryant and literary men from a dis- 
tance visited him often. Richard- 
son, in his "American Literature," 
says : " Simms was poet, dramatist, 
Shakespearian editor, essayist, aph- 
oristic philosopher, historian, biog- 
35 



B Glance at tbe gieiS. 

rapher, lecturer, commemorative or- 
ator, legislator, proslavery apolo- 
gist, journalist, magazinist, critic, 
and, above all, novelist." lie began 
as poet, and published several vol- 
umes of verse. Although bright 
flashes abound in his poetry, yet it 
is marred by evidences of haste and 
crudeness. He will be remembered 
by his novels, of which he wrote a 
great many. These are largely 
tales with an historical background, 
the partisan warfare in the Caroli- 
nas in revolutionary times furnish- 
ing a fine field for such writings. 
What Cooper and John Esten 
Cooke did for their sections, Simms 
in a fuller measure did for the 
South. The historian cannot afford 
to ignore his pictures of Marion, 
Sumter, Gates, and other Ameri- 
can officers who operated in the 
South, as well as his description of 
British officers and Tories. The 
war which stirred so many South- 
ern writers, especially poets, into 
36 



B Glance at tbe Afield* 

activity, seemed to daze Simms. 
The tragedy was too real. The 
close found him in extreme poverty, 
his home and library destroyed. 
For the sake of his children he un- 
dertook heavy contracts for his pen, 
and overwork hastened the end, 
which came in 1870. Self -conse- 
crated to letters when literature was 
not in large vogue, his life may be 
expressed in his sonnet, " Man- 
hood." 

I know that I must struggle, and I know 
That sorrow in that struggle must be 

mine, 
And with denial I must chafe and 
pine! 
My nature and the world decree it so! 
But shall I from the progress backward 

go? 
My hand upon the plowshare, shall my 
heart 
Shrink from the toil because the toil 
be great. 
And there are those who, striving, cry, 
"Depart! 
Lest you provoke our ridicule and 
hate!" 

37 



B <5lance at tbe 3ftett>. 

This were to fight with fortune against 
fate; 
A harder conflict than to struggle on, 
Still falling, and arising but to fall, 
But still to rise and struggle, firm 
through all, 
Growing stronger with each foot of prog- 
ress won! 

For grace and beauty of style 
William Wirt, of Virginia, has sel- 
dom been excelled. Although he 
scarcely for a moment turned aside 
from law and politics, and was one 
of the most delightful conversation- 
alists of the nation, yet his writing 
is far beyond that of an amateur, 
both in matter and cultured finish. 
His "Letters of a British Spy " con- 
tain the famous description of the 
blind preacher, Rev. James Wad- 
dell. Wirt's " Life of Patrick Hen- 
ry," and Kennedy's " Life of Wirt," 
are both admirable pieces of biog- 
raphy. Chief Justice Marshall's 
" Life of Washington " can never 
be entirely superseded. A number 
of excellent biographies have been 
38 



% (Blance at tbe afielfc, 

produced by Southern hands, but 
since the war this work has been 
commited, in the main, to Northern 
pens. The field of biography and 
history is ripe unto the harvest for 
our own rising young writers, not 
that there is any prejudice of sec- 
tions in this view of the case, but 
the work lies at our door, and we 
ought by this time to have judicial 
fairness as well as sympathetic in- 
terest enough to do the work. 

Not only did Edgar A. Poe write 
many strange, weird tales of won- 
derful power, but in some respects 
he was the greatest poet America 
has produced. His lasting benefit 
to American literature was that he 
lifted literary criticism above the 
plane of paltry praise or petty fault- 
finding, and gave it position and 
principles. The controversy which 
his life and work excited is no small 
portion of literature. 

It has been claimed that even in 
the darkest days of the Confederacy 
39 



a (Slance at tbe 3fieU>. 

humor was still a product of the 
Southern camp. Reminiscences of 
lawyers, who practiced on the " Cir- 
cuits " abound in racy anecdotes 
which were told from town to town. 
Even staid clergymen were accus- 
tomed to unbend at times and regale 
brother ministers with incidents 
told with a decidedly humorous 
turn. Henry Watterson says : " In 
the more elaborate stories of the au- 
thor of c Dukesborough Tales,' and 
in the delicious fables of ' Uncle Re- 
mus,' we discover not merely marked 
progress in literary handicraft, but 
a total absence of the merely local 
tone which abounds in the writ- 
ing of Longstreet, Harris, Thomp- 
son, and Hooper." It is that " local 
tone r which makes valuable the 
realistic character sketches of those 
old days of logrollings, cornshuck- 
ings, militia musters, political bar- 
becues, camp meetings, and county 
courts. Judge Longstreet's " Geor- 
gia Scenes," J. H. Hooper's " Si- 
40 



B 0lance at the 3fiel&. 

mon Suggs," Judge Baldwin's 
" Flush Times," Col. W. T. Thomp- 
son's " Major Jones," might have 
been bona Jide personages, so true 
to time and place were they. Da- 
vid Crockett could hardly have 
lived, acted, and written under other 
circumstances. The humor of those 
characters was not a made up affair, 
but just bubbled right out of the 
earth. Coarse though it was, George 
W. Harris, of East Tennessee, cre- 
ator of " Sut Luvingood," had much 
native " mother wit." George W. 
Bagby's " Mozis Addums," was a 
bright example of the cultured, 
genial humorist who wrote sense as 
well as fun. Prentice set the ex- 
ample, and many newspapers had a 
department in which biting things 
were said, things which sometimes 
called for " pistols and coffee," but 
more often " turned the laugh on 
the other fellow." 

Those days have gone, but our 
living writers prove that not yet 
41 



21 (Blance at tbe ifielo. 

has gone the ability to see the in- 
congruous, the ridiculous, the real- 
ity of things about them, and to 
build of these genial creations which 
shall continue to open the well- 
springs of joyousness and whole- 
some mirth. In this hasty glance 
at the field " the half has not been 
told " of what has been done by 
faithful, self-denying men and wom- 
en, many of whose works are too 
good to be allowed to perish utter- 
ly, and whose struggles are a part 
of the history of the loftiest endeav- 
or of a people surrounded by cir- 
cumstances at once unique and pe- 
culiar. If a country must have 
"ruins" and " wrecks " and 
" graves " and memories of brave 
deeds — a history, before it can have 
a literature, then the southern por- 
tion of the United States is ready 
for a newer and grander era in lit- 
erary development. 
42 



No. 



Ten Cents. 








Pioneers of « « « 
OiifDerti Oferafitre 



Paul •fcamdton lba\>ne 

poet ^Laureate of tbe Soutb 
Be Samuel Blbeit Xinft 



JSar&ee & Smttb, Bgents 

JVasfc-rilie, Tenn. 







Pioneers of Southern Eiterature. 

Ml'CII has been written of "!' 
ment in Southern Litem' lit little has been 

said of those pioneers who wrought while litera- 
ture brought neither fame nor remuneration. "With 
for literature and love for the South, these 
toiled upward in the right. They deserve more 
than a mere passing notice. As precursors of the 
"new day'' they should not be forgotten by their 
own people. For some years this writer has gath- 
ered material covering the period preceding and 
immediately subsequent to the war, and now em- 
bodies some of the results in a series of ten book- 
lets, hoping that these may not be without value to 
those wno cherish interest in the history of South- 
ern life and thought, as well as to those engaged in 
the work of education. 

The booklets will be issued at intervals under 
the following titles: 

No. i. A Glance at the Field. Here a Tale; 
There a Song. 

No. 2. Paul Hamilton Hayne, Poet Laureate of 
the South. 

No. 3. Dr. Frank O. Ticknor, the Southern Lyr- 
ic Poet; and Henry Timrod, the Unfortu- 
nate Singer. 

No. 4. William Gilmore Simms : The Novelist, 
the Poet. 

No. 5. John P. Kennedy, John Esten Cooke, and 
Other Southern Novelists. 

No. 6. Edgar Allan Poe : A Genius in Story and 
Song. 

No. 7. War Poets of the South. Singers on 
Fire. 

No. 8. Singers inVarious Keys: John R. Thomp- 
son, James Barron Hope, Henry Lynden 
Flash, and Others. 

No. 9. Southern Humorists : Longstreet, Bald- 
win, Hooper, W. T. Thompson, Davy Crock- 
ett, and Others. 

No. 10. Political Writers and Historians. 

Such division has been made as will in some 
measure cover the entire field from the earliest 
times until about 1S70, when the leading magazines 
were thrown open to Southern writers. 

A bibliography of the writers considered will be 
included in the last booklet of the series. 

Price, lOc. per Number, Postpaid. 
ffiarbee dc Smith, ftgents, 

-Xrjs/iW/Ze. T&nn. 



o^ 



VRIGIIT 




t 



LEXANDER BROME 

said : 

A poet's life dependeth still, 
Not on the poet's wit, but reader's wilL 

Sometime since Sara Orne Jew* 
ett published in the Century a story 
entitled, "All My Sad Captains." 
One could hardly forbear reading 
the story to see why the captains 
were sad. If the South should 
ever again forget the rush for ma- 
terial advancement long enough to 
give a thought to highest things of 
culture, she might designate her 
poets, "All My Sad Singers." The 
sadness comes from neglect. As a 
people we have neither honored our 
singers nor treasured their songs ; 
not only that, we have not sought 
to know if their songs had power 
to charm our ears, or inspire our 
43 



IPaul tbamilton "feagne. 

lives. Thomas Nelson Page says : 
" The harpers were present at the 
feast, but no one called for the 
song - ." In this matter no severer 
charge should lie against the South 
than belongs to the world in all 
time. 

Seven cities honored Homer dead, 
Through which he living begged his 
bread. 

Possibly the request was often 
made in vain. This trait of human- 
ity has been forcibly expressed in a 
beautiful poem by one of our own 
singers, George Washington Cole- 
man, in 

The Passing of the Singer. 

He came alone, the pale singer, 
'Long the dusty road to the town; 

His feet were worn and his heart was 
torn, 
His eyes were wide and brown. 

He paused in the street of the city, 

And hope sprang up amain; 
To the surging throng that hurried 
along, 
He sang a plaintive strain. 
44 



IPaul ibamilton Da^ne. 

But some had to buy in the market, 
And others to sell in the shop, 

And many to play, and a few to pray, 
And none had time to stop. 

So they did not hear the music, 

They did not turn to look, 
Save a woman worn, a lover lorn, 

And a student over his book. 

• ••« « • • • 

He went alone, the pale singer, 

'Long the dusty road from the town ; 

His cheeks were thin, and tears stood in 
His eyes so wide and brown. 

• •••• • - • • 

When the sunset gates were opened, 
And the western skies aflame, 

From over the hill to the city still 
A magical music came. 

Men cried, "Do you hear the music?" 
They were resting after the day. 

"That singer sweet to our city street 
Shall come and dwell for aye ! " 

Far over the land they sought him, 
Sought till the night grew late ; 

But the weary feet of the singer sweet 
Had passed the sunset gate. 

"With us this fate has been not 
only to the singer, but to other na- 
tive writers as well. In Canada 
45 



Paul "fcamtlton Iba^ne. 

Miss Murfree's work has been suf- 
ficiently appreciated to call for an 
edition of " In the Tennessee Moun- 
tains," and the sale has been greater 
possibly than in the capital of her 
own State. Lanier found his au- 
dience in the North. It is time for 
us to consider these things a re- 
proach. For lack of healthy criti- 
cism a great deal of trash — bombas- 
tic extravaganza — has been offered 
the South in the name of literature. 
But some very good works have 
been offered and died with part of a 
small first edition upon the publish- 
ers' shelves. Not many could be 
expected to enter the field of litera- 
ture under such conditions. Some 
who flirted with the Muses felt con- 
strained to do so under fictitious 
names. 

We owe perpetual honor to such 
as have caught in some measure the 
rich glow of the skies, the luxuri- 
ant fragrance and sensuous music 
rife in the semi tropical air, togeth- 
40 



Paul f>amilton 1&a&ne* 

er with touches of the spirit of a 
people ever generous and brave, 
and have sought to trace these im- 
pressions upon an imperishable can- 
vas. Among these none labored 
with more unfaltering trust and 
loftier aim or had broader sympa- 
thies and truer love for his people 
than the subject of this sketch. 
We lack an adequate history of the 
life and works of Paul Hamilton 
Hayiste. In fact, his works have 
not been collected. In 1882 D. 
Lothrop & Co. brought out an ex- 
pensive volume of his poems, which 
is out of reach of many who might 
otherwise give some attention to 
one whose poems well repay study. 
Moreover, some of his very best 
poems were written after the publica- 
tion of that volume. His prose works, 
some of which are idyllic in beauty, 
have not been collected in any form. 
These things ought not to be, since 
his works are part of the heritage, 
the treasure, and the heroism of a 
47 



jps.ul Hamilton IDasne. 

people. In his prose more than in 
his poety he touches the transient 
and current, sometimes impaling 
follies with a sharp pen, at other 
times with the touch of a painter 
turning out sketches of persons and 
places aglow with life and dramatic 
power — sketches which shall ever 
be of increasing interest to the his- 
torian as well as to the lover of the 
beautiful. 

The history of American litera- 
ture, to be complete, must omit 
none of the prominent factors which 
make up the full result. Not even 
the exigency of a war should be 
sufficient to cause the suppression 
of anything entitled to be known. 
The necessity for such utterance is 
easily felt after an examination of 
many of the professedly full "man- 
uals." However, it is gratifying to 
note that each succeeding contribu- 
tion to the history of authorship 
supplies some of the deficiencies of 
its predecessors. This gives hope 
48 



Emu! Ibamtlten fmsne* 

that the greater part of the names 
about which we of the South are 
jealous will finally be accorded their 
proper meed of praise. Perhaps 
the day is not just yet at hand when 
the South will search for poetry in 
the " Biglow Papers " of Lowell, 
or the North appreciate the fervor 
of Timrod's " Cry to Arms," but 
the hand of a master must come to 
be recognized, no matter where the 
touches may have been applied. 
Any literature which has a local 
coloring must to that extent be sec- 
tional. Our country is so large and 
the points of view so varied that it 
cannot be considered a fault if one 
should make a microscopic study of 
some specific portion. By the dic- 
tum of Horace, a painter is forbid- 
den the incongruity of painting the 
head of a human being to the neck 
of a horse and the body of a fish ; 
so he should not attempt the im- 
possibility of representing on his 
canvas in a single view the Puritan, 
4 49 



Ipaul Hamilton Ibagne, 

the Cavalier, and the stirring deni- 
zen of the West with a background 
of granite hills, billowy wheat 
fields, and wide tracts of snowy 
cotton. The picture, to be perfect, 
must be made up of many partial 
views rightly joined together. An 
examination of the general picture 
of America, as shown by its litera- 
ture, and especially its poetry, shows 
no mean portion to have received 
its coloring at the artist hand of 
Paul H. Hayne, the grace of whose 
work does not suffer by comparison 
with that of his contemporaries. 

" Poet laureate of the South ! " 
Yes, that title by divine right be- 
longs to Hayne. If the earliest and 
most constant loyalty to the Muse, a 
steady flame of poetic fervor, and 
the production of the largest amount 
of good poetry be the test, then the 
honor of that uncrowned preemi- 
nence goes easily to the poet of 
" Copse Hill." He was a poet in every 
high and true sense. In his works 
50 



£>aul Hamilton 1&a^ne» 

the word-music of Tennyson unites 
with the love for nature of Keats 
and Wordsworth. His compass 
may not have been as great as that of 
some, but his sweetness was of the 
song of birds and the South winds 
laden with the perfume of flowers. 
If he rarely reached "L'Allegro," 
neither did his mood linger at " II 
Penseroso," His soul, unlike By- 
ron's and Poe's, may not have been 
a dark sea where brooded and broke 
forth fierce tempests of passion ; he 
may not have been " dowered with 
the hate of hate or the scorn of 
scorn," but he surely did have the 
" love of love." He lingered be- 
tween the extremes of the diapason, 
but tender indeed and rich are the 
melodies which he finds there. The 
environments of a poet are supposed 
to affect his song, hence the desire to 
visit his secret haunts and surprise 
him in his home. The facts of 
Hayne's life are here gathered from 
admirable sketches by Mrs. Pres- 
1* 51 



Raul ibamflton Em^ne* 

ton, Maurice Thompson, C. F. 
Richardson, Miss Rutherford, from 
" Poets' Homes," and other sources, 
as well as from his own writings. 
Thompson writes nobly of his 
friend and brother poet, but has 
something of an apologetic tone for 
the poetry of Hayne — at least for 
its limitations. The sketches by 
Mrs. Preston, herself the queen of 
Southern song, are unsurpassed. 

Paul Hamilton Hayne was born 
in Charleston, S. C, January i, 
1830. His ancestors came from 
Shropshire, England, in colonial 
days. Says a writer in " Poets' 
Homes : " u The Haynes of South 
Carolina, like the Adamses snd Quin- 
ceys of Massachusetts, have seemed 
to rely for fame rather upon the 
putting forth of some new achieve- 
ment in each generation than upon 
any proud contemplation of past 
celebrity or renown." John Hayne, 
of Hayne Hall, Shropshire, ances- 
tor of the American family, was of 
52 



IPaul Damilton Ibagne* 

the most prominent English gentry, 
but that did not prevent the patriot- 
ic devotion and matchless courage of 
Isaac Hayne for the American cause 
in the Revolution. One uncle, Gov. 
Robert Y. Hayne, the opponent of 
Webster, was one of the most hon- 
ored statesmen of his time. Anoth- 
er uncle, Col. Arthur P. Hayne, 
fought in three wars, and became a 
member of the United States Sen- 
ate in 1858. His father, Lieut. 
Hayne, died at sea while the poet 
was yet an infant. One of his most 
touching earlier poems is with ref- 
erence to that father whose voice he 
" has never sprung to catch." He was 
educated in Charleston, graduating 
in due time from Charleston Col- 
lege. Inheriting the prestige of a 
noble name and a fair amount of 
wealth, he was free to choose his 
own path in the world. The idea 
did not prevail at that time in that 
city that any young man was free 
to do nothing. Mrs. Preston says : 
53 



Paul ibamUton f>astte« 

"The Charleston of thirty years 
ago was a very different place from 
the Charleston of to-day. The old 
Huguenot element, with its aristo- 
cratic names and associations, was 
strong, and the large admixture of 
good English blood helped to make 
the people just a little exclusive. 
There was a decided literary ele- 
ment, too, among its higher classes. 
Legare's wit and scholarship bright- 
ened its social circle ; Calhoun's 
deep shadow loomed up over it from 
his plantation at Fort Hill ; Gil- 
more Simms's genial culture broad- 
ened its sympathies. The latter 
was the Maecenas to a band of bril- 
liant youths who used to meet for 
literary suppers at his beautiful 
home." After graduation Hayne 
studied law, but he came from school 
a verse maker, and soon, with Tim- 
rod and others, became a regular 
contributor to the Southern Liter- 
ary Messenger, so long published 
at Richmond, Va. He soon be- 
54 



Paul Hamilton l&aigne* 

came editor in part of the Southern 
Literary Gazette^ a weekly issued 
in Charleston. The cotei'ie of young 
literary aspirants in this rare old 
city determined to have a better out- 
let for their thought, hence JRusselPs 
Magazine made its appearance in 
April, 1857, with Paul H. Hayne as 
editor. This lived only two years, 
but the prestige and practice given 
these young writers made its career 
not an unworthy one. About this 
time he was married to Miss Mary 
Middleton Michel, daughter of an 
eminent French physician, honored 
for his skill in the army of the 
first Napoleon. 

Hayne's first volume of poems, 
from Ticknor & Fields, Boston, ap- 
peared in 1855 ; his second, from 
Charleston, in 1857; and the third, 
from Ticknor & Fields, in i860. 
All these were well received, and 
gave him a high position among the 
writers of the South. At the North, 
Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, and 
55 



IPaul Hamilton Da^ne. 

others, held out the hand of kind 
welcome. His path now seemed 
the fairest. To quote Mrs. Preston 
again : " He had the advantage of 
quite a distinguished appearance, 
was slightly built, and of medium 
height, with a graceful, lithe figure, 
a fine, oval face, with starrv, mag- 
netic eyes that glowed with respon- 
sive sympathy. He had abundant 
dark hair thrown back from a high 
forehead, and his manner was ur- 
bane and courteous to a high de- 
gree." Possessing a beautiful home, 
fine library, ample provisions for 
the future, troops of friends, and 
tasting the first sweets of a poet's 
honors, he discerned no boding 
shadow of the calamities through 
which he must pass to become the 
laureate of his loved Southland. 

It has been claimed that no good 
poetry was produced at the South 
before the war. The works of 
Pinkney, Poe, J. R. Thompson, 
Flash, Wilde, Cooke, Hope, and 
56 



jpaul Hamilton ibasne* 

others, were far from being without 
merit. Moreover, Hayne's three vol- 
umes, while they did not show the 
maturity which he attained in his later 
years, yet gave evidence that the hand 
of a master sought the tuneful strings. 
If a new writer should put forth to- 
morrow, in one of our dailies, a 
poem as good as some of these, 
public interest in that writer would 
be immediately awakened. Hayne 
stood thus early with 

Eyes fixed forever on a starry height, 
Whence stately shapes of grand imag- 
inings 

Flash down the splendors of imperial 
light. 

He early announced the creed which 
he followed in poverty and exile as 
if the fateful call of destiny were 
upon him : 

Yet would I rather in the outward state 
Of song's immortal temple lay me 
down, 
A beggar basking by that radiant gate, 
Than bend beneath the haughtiest em- 
pire's crown. 

57 



IPauI Hamilton Ibagne. 

James Wood Davidson says of 
these earlier songs : " There are 
several that Tennyson might have 
written without damage to his rep- 
utation as the first artist anions: 
English poets." The "Anniversa- 
ry Ode " before the Carolina Art 
Association, delivered February 10, 
1S56, was, by some, considered the 
best of these early productions. It 
has some of the sentiment ex- 
pressed more at length in Lanier's 
" Symphonv." Those who find 
little merit in what they are 
pleased to call the "Old South" 
would do well to compare this with 
other anniversary poems, note the 
delicate play of fancy and the rich 
music of the words, then produce 
an instance in which a young man 
has written a better. " The Pre- 
sentiment " has this : 

Over her face so tender and meek, 

The light of a prophecy lies, 
That has silvered the red of the rose on 
her cheek, 

58 



IP&ul Hamilton Iba^ne* 

And chastened the thought in her 
eyes! 

The closing stanza runs : 

And later still, shall the churchyard 
flowers, 
Gleam nigh with a white increase; 
And a bird outpour by the old church 
towers, 
A plaintive poem of peace. 

" The Village Beauty " and " The 
Wintry Winds May Idly Rave " 
are very different poems, but each 
exquisite. This, over the picture of 
one dead, is touching : 

The face, the beautiful face, 

Ever haunting my heart and brain, 
Bringing ofttimes a dream of heaven, 

Ofttimes the pang of a pain 
Which darteth down like a lightning 
flash 

To the dreadful deeps, 
Where the gems of a shipwrecked life 
are cast, 

And its dead cold promise sleeps. 

Ha^me's second volume was made 
up largely of sonnets. He culti- 
1** 59 



IPaul Ibaimlton Da^ne* 

vated with success this form of 
poetry to the end. Of his sonnets 
Maurice Thompson says : u I could 
pick out twenty of them the equal 
of almost any in our language." 
Among the earliest is found " Octo- 
ber : 



75 



The passionate summer's dead! the sky's 
aglow 
With roseate flushes of matured desire, 
The -winds at eve are musical and low, 
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre, 
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire, 
Whose pomp of strange procession up- 
ward rolls, 
With gorgeous blazonry of pictured 

scrolls, 
To celebrate the summer's past renown ; 

Ah me! how regally the heavens look 
down, 

O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal 

woods 

And harvest fields with hoarded increase 

brown, 

And deep-toned majesty of golden 

floods, 

That raise their solemn dirges to the sky, 

To swell the purple pomp that floateth 

by. 

60 



Paul Datntlton Da^ne* 

" Great Poets and Small " and 
u My Study," give an insight to the 
author's life and thoughts. 

When the war came, the poet, in 
his zeal for his native land, sought 
to wield weapons of warfare, and 
was placed on Gov. Pickens's staff, 
but on account of his frail health 
was compelled to resign. Never- 
theless, he breathed out his defiance 
in song, as what Southern poet did 
not? Some who never felt the di- 
vine frenzy before or after became 
inspired amid that breaking up of 
the great deep of human passions. 
He, like all the others, begins with 
high hopes and dignified defiance 
in "My Mother Land," but ends 
with a sad and bitter wail for the 
dead. Witness some lines : 

I am sitting alone and weary, 

By the hearth of my darkened room ; 

And the low wind's miserere 

Makes sadder the midnight gloom. 

There's a nameless terror nigh me — 
There's a phantom spell on the air, 

And methinks that the dead glide by me, 
61 



Paul Ibamilton IDa^ne. 

And the breath of the grave's in my 
hair. 

Hayne had no hearth to sit by 
when the conflict closed. During 
the bombardment of Charleston his 
beautiful home and ample library 
were lost. The family silver had 
been carried to Columbia, but was 
lost on Sherman's march. Nothing 
remained to lighten the weight of 
abject poverty. There were friends, 
it is true, but in many instances they 
too had lost all. It was a land of 
ruined homes, prostrate business, 
and broken hopes. Over all was 
the dark pall of reconstruction. To 
establish a home of some sort and 
begin anew the struggle of life, the 
poet secured eighteen acres of poor 
pine land, located on the railroad, a 
few miles from Augusta, Ga. Says 
Maurice Thompson : " There he 
built of upright boards a story-and- 
a-half cottage, rough, poorly joined, 
and roofed with clapboards. It was 
just such a house, to all outward ap- 
G2 



Paul Hamilton jbagne* 

pearances, as one sees occupied by 
the trackmen's families along any 
railroad; but inside it was what 
nothing but enlightened love could 
have made it — a bower of beau- 
ty. No beauty that money buys 
was there — for very little money 
ever crossed the threshold — but the 
invisible, imperishable beauty of 
sweet souls was there, informing 
everything. The place became a 
sort of Southern Mecca, to which 
loving folk made pilgrimages ; and 
its name, " Copse Hill," grew famil- 
iar to all the world. Here, upon a 
desk fashioned out of a rude work- 
bench left by the carpenters who 
tumbled the house together, Hayne 
wrote all of his most notable 
poems." 

With little market for his wares 
at the North, with the South too 
poor to buy, and with friends urg- 
ing him to turn his efforts to some- 
thing else, he held to his first love 
— poesy — with the devotion of a 
63 



Paul Hamilton Ibasne. 

Milton dictating " Paradise Lost n 
in poverty and blindness. lie 
adopted the philosophy of action 
proclaimed by himself years before : 

Still smiles the brave soul, undivorced 
from hope; 
And, -with unwavering eye and warrior 

mien, 
Walks in the shadow, dauntless and se- 
rene, 
To test, through hostile years, the utmost 
scope 
Of man's endurance — constant to essay 
All heights of patience free to feet of 
clay. 

Tennyson is indeed a virgin poet, 
if speaking in "naught but num- 
bers " can make one such. In like 
manner, no one in America has 
been so completely and fully a poet 
as Hayne. Longfellow was for a 
time professor in college ; Bryant 
was a newspaper man ; and the 
others, temporarily at least, have 
trained Pegasus along the paths of 
different professions. Barring a 
few prose sketches, almost poetry, 
04 



f>aul "fcamilton IDa^ne* 

and one of the finest biographies 
ever written — that of Timrod — 
nothing baser than the fine-beaten 
gold of poesy came from his work- 
shop. The gold was well-beaten, 
for everything bore the impress of 
a careful master's hand. He not 
only " uttered nothing base," but he 
uttered fewer commonplaces than 
most men. Thompson says : 
"Hayne is perhaps the only poet in 
America who ever dared to depend 
solely upon poetry for his income." 
Some of his longer poems obtained 
high approval from lovers of good 
poetry, but he is at his best in his 
sonnets and lyrics. He could best 
hear — not the voices of the Greeks, 
but of his own birds, streams, and 
trees : 

Voices low and sweet 

From the far-off stream, 

Where two rivulets meet 

jWith the murmur of a dream; 

Voices loud and free, 

From every bush and tree, 
5 65 



Paul Ibamilton Iba^ne. 

Of sportive forest bards outpouring 
songs of gladness, 

But over them still, 

With its passionate thrill, 
The mock-bird's jocund madness! 

If Bryant sometimes served at 
the altar of Nature, Hayne was her 
high priest who ever dwelt amid her 
glories. If Byron, in the rapid 
sweep of his telescope, took in 
grand views of Nature's operations, 
Hayne, with his sunlit microscope, 
spied out her subtlest secrets. Bry- 
ant was the pioneer of New En- 
land poets. He was the leader of 
an association of poets and wits — 
such as Dana, Halleck, Drake, Wil- 
lis, Sands, and others. Even Long- 
fellow followed him at first. So 
Hayne was long the literary high 
priest of the South. Lanier, Tim- 
rod, and others came about him for 
guidance and encouragement. The 
cheerful letters of counsel which he 
wrote to the younger writers of the 
South are said to have been numer- 
66 



Paul Hamilton Iba^ne* 

ous and long. Even Simrns, who 
like Scott had turned his songs into 
romance, was surprised that Hayne 
could work on, brave and hopeful, 
amid the poverty and desolation left 
him by the war. Thompson says : 
" No right-minded man can go to 
that lonely cot on the poor, brush- 
covered hill in the Georgia wilder- 
ness, and fail to feel how much 
-courage it required to live there as 
Hayne lived, keeping about him all 
the time the serene self-control and 
preserving the noble self-devotion 
characteristic of the man." It is 
not strange that he felt for a while 
the bitterness of the darkness left 
by the war. With so gentle a spir- 
it this could not last. The mock- 
ing bird would pour out his soul, 
and the zephyrs sing through the 
pines, and these sang of peace. 
His fame grew apace, and in time 
he came to contribute to almost ev- 
ery literary journal of respectability 
North and South. But though he 
67 



Paul Ibamilton IDa^ne. 

lived to write " The Pole of Death " 
in memory of Sidney Lanier, yet 
he did not change the spirit of his 
work. He maintained his identity 
with his section, and greatly im- 
proved, but did not greatly alter, the 
quality of his poetry. To the last 
he belonged to what some have de- 
nominated the " Old South," and 
not to the " recent movement in 
Southern literature." Brave and 
loyal indeed was he to his convic- 
tions as to his mission. Many of 
his poems, " polished as a star," 
shine with starlike splendor. Bet- 
ter, maybe, would some of them 
have been if polished less, if show- 
ing less of the self-consciousness of 
the poet, less of South Carolina, 
less of the pines, and more of the 
freedom of the wider world ; but 
then he did not know, had not seen 
that wider world — truly and well he 
sang of what he knew best, and 
made his pines, his birds, and his 
sunlit skies immortal. 
6S 



H>aul Damilton fba^ne* 

In 1872 the Lippincotts published 
his " Legends and Lyrics." This 
contains some of his ripest work. 
Hale & Son, in 1873, brought out 
Timrod's poems, containing a biog- 
raphy by Hayne, which may well 
remain for all time as a model. In 
1875 his " Mountain of the Lovers " 
was given to the public, and in 1879 
he wrote an Introductory notice for 
the poems of Dr. F. O. Ticknor. 
The crowning volume of Hayne's 
poems was brought out in magnifi- 
cent style by D. Lothrop & Co., in 
1882. This contains all his best 
poems, except a few written after- 
wards, which lie scattered through 
the pages of papers and magazines. 
One of these, the " Wheat Field," is 
perhaps not far from his very best, 
and " Face to Face " is the best of 
all. For the " Southern Bivouac," 
of 1885, he furnished a sketch of 
ante bellum Charleston as charming 
as some of Irving's descriptions. 
This carries us back to the time 
69 



lpaut Hamilton Iba^ne. 

when the " beautiful city by trie 
sea" held such intellectual worthies 
as James L. Petigru, Hugh S. Le- 
gare, W. Gilmore Simms, R. V. 
Hayne, W. C. Preston, David Ram- 
sey, Dr. Bruns, Basil Gildersleeve, 
and many others, who are skillfully 
outlined by his passing touch. 
Speaking to the last a good word 
for his contemporaries, in 1886 he 
furnished to the same magazine an 
admirable sketch of the historian, 
Charles Gayarre, of Louisiana. At 
another time he gave a bright sketch 
of " Confederate Songs and Sing- 
ers." We cannot but wish the author 
had lived and received encourage- 
ment to do more such work. The 
South needs it. 

We catch the breath of the pines 
again and again in the poetry of his 
later years. Lanier said, as he wrote 
gasping for breath in the pinewoods : 
" The little leaves would not let me 
alone in my sleep." Thus the pine 
seems to be taking a place in litera- 
70 



IPaul Ibamilton Ibasne* 

ture. One such tree is tenderly en- 
shrined in poetry as having shel- 
tered Timrod on his visit to " Copse 
Hill " a short time before his death. 
Hayne says : 

O tree! against thy mighty trunk he laid 

His weary head. The shades 

Stole over him like the first cool spell of 

sleep; 
It brought a peace so deep 
The unquiet passion died from out his 

eyes, 
As lightning from the stilled skies. 

In the larger knowledge of these 
men which shall come to the future 
the story of the friendship of Hayne 
and Timrod will be considered one 
of the most touching in literary his- 
tory. They had been schoolmates, 
and even then encouraged each oth- 
er in writing verse. They both lost 
all by the war, but Timrod never 
recovered from the neglect which 
followed. The story of his strug- 
gles and death is more pathetic than 
any told of Keats. In regard to 
71 



lpaul tbamilton "Em^ne. 

other poems, following Maurice 
Thompson again, " the ' Mountain 
of Lovers,' the ' Macrobian Bow,' 
« McDonald's Raid,' < Unveiled,' the 
* Vengeance of the Goddess Diana,' 
and the ' Solitary Lake ' are works 
worth the crown of an academy." 
" Muscadines," says Mrs. Preston, 
" is marked with an Ariel-like fancy 
suggestive of Keats or Shelley." His 
u Daphles " won, we are told, the 
approval of Jean Ingelow, Longfel- 
low, Holmes, Whittier, Whipple, 
and Richard Grant White. An 
ever present wish for the highest 
w T as his heritage. 

Yearning meanwhile for pinions like a 

dove's 
To waft me further still 
Beyond the compass of the unwinged will. 

Snatches taken here and there 
cannot give any just idea of the po- 
et's work, but they at least show 
something of his skill in rhythm. 
" Unveiled " begins : 
72 



Paul Hamilton IDa^ne* 

I cannot tell when first I saw her face; 
Was it athwart a sunset on the sea, 
When the huge billows heaved tumult- 
uously, 
Or in the quiet of some woodland place, 
Wrapped by the shadowj boon 
Of breezeless verdures from the sum- 
mer noon? 
Or, likelier still, in a rock-girdled dell 
Between vast mountains, while the 

midnight hour 
Blossomed above me like a shining 
flower, 
Whose star-wrought petals turned the 
fields of space 
To one great garden of mysterious 
light? 

Vain! vain! I cannot tell 

When first the beauty and majestic 

might 
Of her calm presence, bore my soul 

apart 
From all low issues of the groveling 

world. 

Other lines are : 

A rapture smites me, half akin to pain ; 
A sun-flash quivering through white 
chords of rain. 

And this : 

73 



Paul t>amtlton Ibagne, 

I love the mockbird's and brown thrush's 

lay, 
The melted soul of May ; 

Carl Brenner painted the beech 
tree in every variant light and in 
every season of the year until it 
seemed clad in a new splendor. So 
our poet, kept by fateful circum- 
stances to narrow limits of observa- 
tion, made such minute study of the 
various aspects of nature as had rare- 
ly been made before, yet it was the 
eye of a poet that saw the clouds 
come and go and the moon wax and 
wane. Take " Hints of Spring : " 

A softening of the misty heaven, 
A subtle murmur of the air. 

In midsummer the winds 

Seem wandering through a golden dream. 

For him the cloud pictures were 
" castles with guarded roof," " pa- 
godas vague," " lines of Orient pil- 
grims," "splintered icebergs," 
" weird pictures " all. The bee, the 
storm, the forest, twilight, peach 
74 



IPaul Hamilton fda^ne* 

blossoms — the varied phases of 
these and many such things became 
the subjects of his musings. But 
with the notes which these inspire 
there mingles no wail of a Byron, 
no defiance of a Shelley. He does 
not even turn preacher, like aWords- 
worth, but allows the beauty which 
he sees to weave itself into his life 
and through his verse into the lives 
of others. A few years ago Sted- 
man said : " Hayne's vitality, cour- 
age, and lyrical impulse have kept 
him in voice, and his people regard 
him with a tenderness which, if a 
commensurate largess were added, 
should make him feel less solitary 
among his pines." This meant that 
while the Southern people honored 
him with calls on anniversaries, and 
were proud that cultured persons 
abroad regarded him as a poet of no 
mean attainments, yet they did not 
buy and read his poems. We should 
have done so then for the poet's 
3 75 



IPaal Hamilton Iba^nc. 

sake if no other ; we should do so 
now for our own sakes. 

Before the war our people bought 
only English poetry ; the best, may- 
be, but not always the latest. Now 
that we have added New England 
to our collections, we certainly ought 
to add our own Hayne, Lanier, Tim- 
rod, Ticknor, and Mrs. Preston — 
stars fitted to shine in any firma- 
ment. Who dares make claim of 
being well informed and yet be ig- 
norant of our Hayne — not ours for 
sectional reasons, but ours because 
he has seen our skies, our hills, our 
streams, our trees, birds, and flowers, 
and shown them to us touched with 
new effulgence. He has shown us 
that beauty enough lies at our doors 
to enrich our lives. Some years ago 
a writer in Harper' *s intimated that 
poetry has had its day ; but 

As long as the heart has passions, 
As long as the life has woes, 

so long shall we need poetry to voice 
76 



Paul framilton Da^ne. 

these passions and sob out this woe. 
Poetry is the truest philosophy of 
life. Its form may change, but its 
spirit is immortal. This would be 
an " iron world " indeed, if the pa- 
tient, loving hand of the poet should 
no more open for us the gates to the 
temple Beautiful. 

Hayne's health had never been 
vigorous. No doubt he was very 
much sustained under the burdens 
of work which lay upon his last 
years by the sympathetic help of his 
watchful wife, and by the precious 
consciousness that his only child, his 
darling Will, bid fair to develop a 
father's taste and poetic tempera- 
ment. He had felt 

A little while I fain would linger yet, 
All for love's sake, for love that cannot 
tire. 

But that faith in Omnipotence which 
had kept his life and verse from 
growing morose as he drew face to 
face with death enabled him to sing : 

77 



IPaul Ibamllton Ibagne. 

Sad mortal! Couldst thou but know 

What truly it means to die, 
The wings of thy soul would glow 

And the hopes of thy heart beat high; 
Thou wouldst turn from the Pyrrhonist 
schools, 

And laugh their jargon to scorn, 
As the babble of midnight fools 

Ere the morning of Truth be born: 
But I, earth's madness above, 

In a kingdom of stormless breath — 
I gaze on the glory of love 

In the unveiled face of Death. 

I tell thee his face is fair 

As the moon-bow's amber rings, 
And the gleam in his unbound hair 

Like the flush of a thousand springs; 
His smile is the fathomless beam 

Of the star-shine's sacred light, 
When the summers of Southland dream 

In the lap of the holy night: 
For I, earth's blindness above, 

In a kingdom of halcyon breath — 
I gaze on the marvel of love 

In the unveiled face of Death. 

Through the splendor of stars impearled 
In the glow of their far-off grace, 

He is soaring world by world, 

With the souls in his strong embrace; 
78 



f>aul f>antilton fyagtUt* 

Lone ethers, unstirred by a wind, 

At the passage of Death grow sweet 
With the fragrance that floats behind 

The flash of his winged retreat: 
And I, earth's madness above, 

'Mid a kingdom of tranquil breath, 
Have gazed on the luster of love 

In the unveiled face of Death. 

But beyond the stars and the sun 

I can follow him still on his way, 
Till the pearl-white gates are won 

In the calm of the central day. 
Far voices of fond acclaim 

Thrill down from the place of souls, 
As Death, with a touch like flame, 

Uncloses the goal of goals; 
And from heaven of heavens above 

God speaketh with bateless breath — 
My angel of perfect love 

Is the angel men call Death! 

This was the poet's death song. 
Vain is the tale of dissipation told 
by a heartless enemy against one 
who sees such a vision. Early in 
July, 1886, Paul H. Hayne passed 
away. His cherished wife had not 
only been a companion, but a help- 
er. The " Bonny Brown Hand " 
79 



IPaul f>amilton Iba^ne. 

had toiled as v, r ell as comforted. 
[Moreover, she was the inspiration 
of some of his best poems. With 
her son she kept vigil awhile at 
" Copse Hill," then joined her hus- 
band " in a kingdom of stormless 
breath." The gifted son, William, 
has already achieved honorable dis- 
tinction in the field of poesy. His 
father had sung : 

We roam the hills together 

In the golden summer weather, 

Will and I : 
And the glowing sunbeams bless us, 
And the winds of heaven caress us, 
As we wander hand in hand 
Through the blissful summer land, 
Will and I . 

May "the glowing sunbeams" con- 
tinue to bless that son, the Dride of 
a great-souled father, as he wanders 
through a " blissful summer land." 

Hayne could hardly dip his pen 
in hate, even to curse a foe, but he 
knew how to be severely just when 
occasion demanded. He was jeal- 
ous of the honor of his loved South. 
80 



IPaul ©amilton Ida^ne* 

He was, as said, the sympathetic 
high priest of literature to many a 
struggling votary at its altars, but 
his soul was vexed when pretend- 
ers took the field, as happened so 
often at a time when any cheap 
newspaper could assume the role of 
trumpeter to herald and glorify 
conceited arrogance. In the South- 
em Magazine for June, 1874, under 
the title " Literature of the South," 
he vents his righteous scorn upon 
such presumptuous ignorance, char- 
acterizing the product as " the fun- 
gous school." " There is a class of 
writers at the South who, through 
the influence of their peculiar pro- 
ductions, have been involuntarily, 
but not less surely, the worst ene- 
mies of the intellectual advancement 
and repute of their section. Writ- 
ing at the command of impulse, not 
inspiration, with little mental train- 
ing or artistic experience, with but 
slight knowledge of life beneath its 
conventional surfaces, and no marked 
6 81 



Paul tbamttton ibasne. 

originality or natural genius to coun- 
terbalance such disadvantages, they 
boldly challenge the public admira- 
tion by works as ambitious often in 
scope and design as they are fee- 
ble, inefficient, and worthless in ex- 
ecution. Yet now and then such 
performances obtain a factitious suc- 
cess. By means primarily of local 
influence and patronage, of the c/a- 
quement of friends and allies, and 
the blatant commendation of the 
press (generally the provincial press) 
— in brief, by the blowing of an or- 
chestra of brazen trumpets, all set 
to the one tune of indiscriminate 
adulation, the unlucky masses are 
stunned, if not into admiration, at 
least into acquiescence. They find 
it is c quite the thing ' to have read 
Mrs. Duck-a-love's ' pathetic and 
passionate romance, that marvelous 
revelation of a woman's famishing 
heart,' or Mrs. General Aristotle 
Brown's c profound, philosophic nov- 
el, in which metaphysical acumen 
82 



Paul Hamilton f>agn£» 

and a powerful grasp and clear 
comprehension of the knottiest so- 
cial problems of our time are com- 
bined with dramatic capabilities sel- 
dom equaled, and never surpassed, in 
the literature of the present or any 
other age.' . . . Meanwhile, the sort 
of literature we refer to is fast as- 
suming the form and consistency of 
what may be termed a school. . . . 
Now all 'schools' of this description 
are of factitious growth — mere fun- 
gi, sure to perish finally of their own 
inherent feebleness ; yet are they 
most harmful to the countries or 
communities in which for the time 
they flourish. Wrong standards of 
taste or no taste are set up. The 
first essential principles of art are 
wholly ignored. Every half- edu- 
cated person who has composed 
and read aloud some crude essay 
upon nothing in particular before a 
local literary club or library asso- 
ciation straightway rushes into print, 
and, scorning the 'day of small 
83 



IPaul Hamilton IDa^ne. 

things,' must needs come out with 
some elaborate performance, re- 
markable only for its material weight. 
Of course under such fos- 
tering care, and aided by the several 
influences indicated, we may soon 
reasonably expect to see in full devel- 
opment among us the ' Southern 
Fungous School of Literature,' with 
every special tint and grace inhe- 
rent in the order of Fungi. Al- 
ready have some of the chief ex- 
ponents of this rising ' school ' been 
ridiculed mercilessly by the best or- 
gans of Northern and English crit- 
ical opinion — organs that have 
shown their impartiality by com- 
mending, and in earnest terms, 
such other Southern works as 
seemed to them in any genuine way 
meritorious. But no foreign ridi- 
cule, however richly deserved, noth- 
ing truly either of logic or of 
laughter can stop this growing 
evil until our own scholars and 
thinkers have the manliness and 
84 



Paul Hamilton IDa^ne. 

honesty to discourage instead of 
applauding such manifestations of 
artistic weakness and artistic plati- 
tude as have hitherto been foisted 
upon us by persons uncalled and 
unchosen by any of the Muses." 

The publication of a collection of 
Hayne's best poems would enhance 
his fame, and his prose works 
ought by all means to be brought 
into more convenient form. 

Hayne's cheerful spirit has been 

touched upon repeatedly. This 

was not always born of workyday 

hope, but more often of strong 

resolution and sublime faith. He 

was the " weary pilgrim sore beset " 

of whom he sings so beautifully : 

With broken staff and tattered shoon 
I "wander slow from dawn to noon — 
From arid noon till, dew-impearled, 
Pale twilight steals across the world. 

Yet sometimes through dim evening 

calms 
I catch the gleam of distant palms ; 
And hear, far off, a mystic sea, 
Divine as waves on Galilee. 
85 



Paul fbamilton fbayne. 

Perchance through paths unknown, for- 
lorn, 
I still may reach an Orient morn; 
To rest when Easter breezes stir 
Around the sacred sepulcher. 

Hayne had hoped that destiny 
would relent, " even at the eleventh 
hour," and give him an opportunity 
of visiting England and the East. 
He wrote to a friend a short time 
before his death, lamenting his 
final disappointment, but in words 
which give the key to his character 
and his triumphs. He says : "The 
beauty and the splendor of the an- 
cient places of the earth, those after 
which perhaps I have yearned too 
deeply, it has not pleased the All- 
wise to let me see and enjoy. But 
what matter, O friend of mine ! 
what matter, if, after the voyage 
we all must take, I am permitted to 
pass up the shining shores of the 
country imperishable, and to enter a 
temple fairer than the York Mins- 
ter you describe, and a tabernacle 
86 



Paul Ibamilton Ibagne* 

more majestic than Westminster, 
there to worship, not amid dead 
men's ashes and fugues of broken 
music, but amid such light and har- 
mony as occasionally, in moments * 
of lofty but still fleeting spirituality, 
have overwhelmed while they en- 
chanted me ? " We wait to see who 
shall gather up the fallen laurels 
and string anew the broken lyre. 
87 



V 



rs>£6t 



No. 4. 



Ten Cents. 





^a 



vi 



^ 





Pioneers of 



^ ^ 



otifbern Oterature 



William 6ittnore Simitis 

Hbc Boveltet, tbe poet 



JBs Samuel 2Ubert Xfnft 



JSarbee & Smttb, Bsents 

Nashville, Tezm. 








JAN 1' 1898 






r *t$r of Ccp v 






t- 



bHH- 



Pioneers of Southern Citerature, 

BY SAMUEL ALBERT LINK. 



Much has been written of "the recent move- 
ment in Southern Literature," but little has been 
said of those pioneers who wrought while litera- 
ture brought neither fame nor remuneration. With 
love for literature and love for the South, these 
toiled upward in the night. They deserve more 
than a mere passing notice. As precursors of the 
"new day" they should not be forgotten by their 
own people. For some years this writer has gath- 
ered material covering the period preceding and 
immediately subsequent to the war, and now em- 
bodies some of the results in a series of ten book- 
lets, hoping that these may not be without value to 
those who cherish interest in the history of South- 
ern life and thought, as well as to those engaged in 
the work of education. 

The booklets will be issued at intervals under 
the following titles : 

No. i. A Glance at the Field. Here a Tale; 
There a Song. 

No. 2. Paul Hamilton Hayne, Poet Laureate of 
the South. 

No. 3. Dr. Frank O. Ticknor, the Southern Lyr- 
ic Poet; and Henry Timrod, the Unfortu- 
nate Singer. 

No. 4. William Gilmore Simms : The Novelist, 
the Poet. 

No. 5. John P. Kennedy, John Esten Cooke, and 
Other Southern Novelists. 

No. 6. Edgar Allan Poe : A Genius in Story and 
Song. 

No. 7. War Poets of the South. Singers on 
Fire. 

No. 8. Singers inVarious Keys: John R. Thomp- 
son, James Barron Hope, Henry Lynden 
Flash, and Others. 

No. 9. Southern Humorists : Longstreet, Bald- 
win, Hooper, W. T. Thompson, Davy Crock- 
ett, and Others. 

No. 10. Political Writers and Historians. 

Such division has been made as will in some 
measure cover the entire field from the earliest 
times until about 1S70, when the leading magazines 
were thrown open to Southern writers. 

A bibliography of the writers considered will be 
included in the last booklet of the series. 

Price, 10c. per Numfcer, Post-paid. 
&arboe dc Smith, jfyents, 

.ZVasZivilie, T&nn. 



COPYIUGHT, 1S96. 






• <? *■ 















Militant (Biimore Stmms* 



A LEARNED scribe, a willing 
public, an auspicious hour — 
all may be valuable concomi- 
tants to the production of felicitous 
literature, but these of themselves 
are not sufficient. Often the learn- 
ing of the scribe serves only to 
make the dulness more apparent. 
The informing spirit of genius 
must breath upon aptly chosen ma- 
terial, vivifying the whole with that 
indefinable something which must 
not be wanting, but which can nei- 
ther be defined nor imparted by any 
rule known to man. The maker of 
literature which shall enlarge the 
capacity and feeling of the world 
must be in what he writes, of what 
he writes — yea, more, his master- 
piece must be the fulness of himself, 
that the experiences of his life may 
149 



*viUiUiam Gilmore Simms. 



fructify and enlarge the experience 
of his race. The adage "Art is 
long " expresses only half a truth, 
for true art is limitless in space as 
well as eternal ; it speaks and shall 
ever continue to speak to the na- 
tions as they rise. No aspiration 
can be so high as that which bids a 
mortal become an oracle to his age, 
and through his age to all ages — a 
Prometheus bearing the sacred fire 
of heaven to men. 

On a midsummer evening in 1847 
a large audience had assembled in 
the theater in Charleston to hear 
some of the most distinguished ora- 
tors of that time upon the then vi- 
tal subject of the Mexican war. 
The American eagle soared and 
screamed or drooped his pinions in 
turn as eloquence or platitudes pre- 
vailed, until at length a cry was 
raised for " Simms, Gilmore Simms." 
Paul H. Hayne, a youth of seven- 
teen, was in the crowd, and has de- 
scribed his first sight of Simms. In 
150 



Militant (Bilmore Simms* 



his "Ante - Bellum Charleston " 
Hayne says : " I felt a thrill of ex- 
citement and delighted expectation, 
for, like most lads of any fancy or 
taste for reading, I reverenced lit- 
erary genius ; and having already 
been fascinated by some of Simms's 
novels, I had long desired to see the 
author. He now came forward 
with a slow, stately step, under the 
full blaze of the chandeliers, a man 
in the prime of life, tall, vigorous, 
and symmetrically formed. His 
head was a noble one, with a con- 
spicuously high forehead, finely de- 
veloped in the regions of ideality, 
and set upon broad shoulders in 
haughty, leonine grace. Under 
strangely mobile eyebrows Hashed 
a pair of bluish-gray eyes, keen and 
bright as steel. His mouth, slightly 
prominent, especially in the upper 
lip, w r as a wonderfully firm one, 
only less determined in fact than 
the massive jaw and chin which 
might have been molded out of 
151 



12111113111 (Bflmore Slmms. 



iron. An impressive personality, 
likely to catch and hold one's ob- 
servation anywhere, he paused near 
the footlights, rapidly glanced about 
him for an instant, and then began 
his speech with a bold, startling 
paradox. Everybody's attention was 
sharply arrested, and to the end of 
his address as closely retained." 

Simms, then forty-one years old, 
was already the author of more than 
two dozen volumes, many of which 
had been largely read, and some 
had reached several editions. The 
aristocratic and conservative old 
city of Charleston had been some- 
what slow to admit him into its ex- 
clusive circles, had waited perhaps 
for recognition to come from abroad 
before simple justice was done at 
home, but at last the honor due a 
successful author had been largely 
accorded by his own people. When 
a drug clerk turns author anywhere 
he must prove his right to the lau- 
rel wreath before he may be per- 
152 



William (Sitmore Simms. 



mitted to feel its inspiring touch 
upon his brow. This has always 
been true ; it will be true until the 
end of time. The very difficulty of 
such achievement had made it the 
more desirable to the indomitable na- 
ture of Simms, when he, a rising 
young lawyer, had turned aside from 
the bar with a full determination to 
overcome all barriers in the way to 
this very success. The home-com- 
ing prophet seldom hears the boom 
of welcoming cannon, or sees the 
flags thrown to the breeze in his 
honor, but Simms had little real cause 
for complaint. He had entered the 
field with inadequate educational 
equipment and without strong 
friends. In his early manhood he 
had edited the only paper in the 
state opposed to nullification, and 
had thus stood with a minority 
against an excited and almost 
revolutionary majority, yet when 
Simms first met the eager, boy- 
ish eyes of Hayne he was a prom- 
153 



TOUiam <3Umore Stmms. 



inent figure in the intellectual field 
of a city distinguished for men emi- 
nent in classical attainments. His 
home people read his books then ; 
they read them yet. A resident of 
Charleston writes that his works 
are largely read in that city, and 
that set after set are worn out by 
use in the public library. 

Much of the world's best fiction 
has been produced since William Gil- 
more Simms published " Martin Fa- 
ber," in 1833. Not only that, but 
the fashion of fiction has changed 
both as to subjects and style. Some 
assert that even Scott's fame is on 
the wane, while it is certain that 
Cooper holds little of the kingdom 
in which he once reigned supreme. 
He who held men in thrall in the 
youth of our literature has now be- 
come companion for boys. Kenne- 
dy's " Swallow Barn," published 
about the same date as Simms's 
first novel, was until recently out of 
print. Tales of adventure with his- 
154 



TKHUliam ©tlrnote Simms. 



torical basis gave way to novels of 
passion. In fixing the place of 
Simms, the drawback to his fame is 
that his works must be compared 
with the present vintage of fiction. 
Much poorer work than some of 
his is read and praised because it 
suits the taste of the times. It is 
not to make a critical estimate of his 
position in literature that this sketch 
is prepared, but only to show some- 
thing of the part which he, in com- 
mon with others, took in a faith- 
ful, intelligent effort to create a lit- 
erature for the Southern States of 
the Union. 

The year 1821, in which Haw- 
thorne and Longfellow entered 
college, has been designated as 
the time in which " a distinctive 
American literature began to ap- 
pear." Irving's " Sketch-Book" was 
already two years old, but at the 
date named appeared Bryant's first 
volume of poems, Cooper's " Spy," 
Dana's " Idle Man," and Percival's 
155 



lUilliam Gilmore Simms. 



first volume of poems, which Ed- 
ward Everett, with the usual mis- 
take of a contemporary, hailed as 
" the harbinger of a golden day." 
The second generation of writers, 
so to speak, came on at the North 
as contemporaries of Simms. But 
the two sections had begun to drift 
aoart, and the best talent of the 
South was set for defense, and re- 
sented such criticisms as certain 
New E nsrland writers seemed dis- 
posed to make. The result was that 
these later Northern writers did not 
come into much favor at the South 
until after the war. Simms early 
felt that the larger defense of his 
section consisted in the creation of 
a literature, while most of his 
contemporaries thought the task 
committed to the orators alone. 
Thus Simms, the first of his genera- 
tion in the South, came to be set 
against the second generation of 
writers at the North. 

America has produced one novel- 
156 



William Gilmore Simms* 



ist whose name is entitled to be 
mentioned among the five best of 
English literature. It is needless to 
say that this is Hawthorne. Others 
have been read more extensively for 
the time, but their fame has proved 
ephemeral. Hawthorne was not 
half so well known while living as 
was Cooper, nor did his permanent 
place seem so well assured. The 
precursor of all these was Charles 
Brockden Brown. He was the first 
American who undertook to support 
himself by literature alone. Brown 
"was editor as well as novelist. As 
in the case of Poe, there was little 
local or even national flavor in his 
gruesome stories. Hardly anything 
so dark and tragical had ever been 
written. A pall of midnight was 
spread over his scenes. Hawthorne 
borrowed much of his coloring, but 
Poe reveled in it and, by comparison, 
turned Brown's pictures into insig- 
nificance. Irving, with his Addi- 
sonian style and sprightly sketches, 
157 



TOUtam ©ilmore Slmms. 



was the first to elevate American 
prose to British notice. Lounsbury 
tells us that in those days a thing 
must first be praised in England in 
order to receive attention at all in 
America. Cooper was induced to 
write a second novel because his 
first had received a few favorable 
notices in the mother country. In 
fact, in his first venture, the author 
was thought to be an Englishman. 
Nevertheless, James Fenimore 
Cooper was the first American 
writer who relied chiefly on Ameri- 
can scenes and American person- 
ages. While no positive informa- 
tion seems to be at hand on that 
subject, we may at least suppose 
that the success of Cooper on the 
lines of personal adventure and in 
portraying, or rather idealizing, the 
native Indian had its influence on 
Simms in his choice of themes. 
Personal adventures in the French 
and Indian War, daring feats by 
scout and soldier during the Revo- 
158 



TDQilliam <5ilmore Simms. 



lution, the pathetic and watchful 
but hopeless courage with which the 
native chiefs sought to resist the ad- 
vancing paleface — these had been 
found to lend themselves readily to 
fiction, Not only was this true, but 
numerous readers had attested their 
interest in these subjects. Even in 
England people had read and praised 
a sea novel written by Cooper, the 
American, with Paul Jones as hero. 
What Cooper had done for the 
traditions of the North Simms 
sought to do in some due measure 
for those of the South, rich as it 
was, and is yet, in material for the 
writer of historical romance. From 
the days of De Soto's wonderful 
march until the tribes were removed 
west of the Mississippi, the Indian 
had been an ever-present factor in 
all struggles between his paleface 
brothers, as well as a romantic actor 
on his own account. The partisan 
conflicts in the South during the 
Revolution, often resulting in brave 
159 



William Gilmore Simms. 



encounters between a few individu- 
als, made inviting themes for the 
thrilling narrator. 

Cooper, the novelist of the North- 
ern border, was seventeen years old, 
and John P. Kennedy, the author of 
" Swallow Barn," " Horseshoe Rob- 
inson," and other tales of the Old 
Dominion, was eleven years old 
when William Gilmore Simms was 
born. That event happened at 
Charleston, S. C, April 17, 1806. 
His mother died when he was an 
infant, and his father went to Ten- 
nessee and finally enlisted as a sol- 
dier to fight the Indians ; hence 
young Simms was left to the care 
of his maternal grandmother, while 
his father campaigned with Jackson 
or roamed over what was then the 
West. That father was himself a 
lover of adventure, with power to 
depict in strong colors his varied 
experiences. The older Simms set- 
tled in Mississippi after many wan- 
derings, and thence made a futile ef- 
160 



•QdUIiam 6ilmete Sftnma. 



fort to obtain possession of his son 
William ; but the decision of the 
matter was left to the boy, who 
naturally preferred to remain with 
the grandmother, whom he knew, 
rather than go to the father, who 
was so nearly a stranger. At eight- 
een the young man sought out his 
father's Western home and re- 
mained long enough to become well 
acquainted with the thrilling inci- 
dents which his father narrated so 
graphically. This visit may have 
had much to do in shaping the final 
direction of the young man's mind 
as to choice of subjects for his pen. 
The father attempted by strenuous 
persuasions and glowing prospects 
of future advancement to detain the 
embryo novelist, since he thought 
that the newer Mississippi offered 
more to a young man than the older 
South Carolina, and especially 
Charleston, with its old families and 
civilization set in grooves. At a 
later time the younger Simms was 
11 161 



XSlillfam Oilmore Stmms. 



accustomed to say that his fortune 
misrht have been made had he taken 
his father's advice and followed the 
law in Mississippi. In fact, in 
" Norman Maurice," a drama writ- 
ten many years later, he represents 
what was perhaps his father's argu- 
ment. Norman Maurice gives his 
reasons for leaving Philadelphia to 
go to the West as follows : 

Here, it may be, 
That after weary toil and matchless 

struggle, 
When strength subsides in age, they will 

acknowledge 
That I am worthy of my bread ; may bid 

me 
Look up and be an alderman or mayor. 

• ••• •• • • • 

In the West 

There is a simpler and a hardier nature, 

That proves men's values, not by wealth 
and title, 

But mind and manhood. There no an- 
cient stocks 

Claim power from precedence. Patrician 
people, 

That boast of virtues in their grandmoth- 
ers, 

162 



tailitam <3iimore Simms. 



Are challenged for their own. With 

them it answers 
If each man founds his family and stands 
The father of a race of future men! 
Mere parchment, and the vain parade of 

title, 
Lift no man into stature. Such a region 
Yields all that I demand: an open field, 
And freedom to all comers. 

But young Simms had left a 
sweetheart in Charleston, and maybe 
her love-lit eyes had power to draw 
him to her side, or was it the fateful 
call of destiny which had decided 
that he must be a literary man rath- 
er than a Mississippi planter or a 
member of Congress from a new 
state? Although he had been a 
drug clerk and had aimed at medi- 
cine, yet more recently the law had 
seemed nearer in line with his intel- 
lectual bent. When the visit to his 
father occurred the youth was ai- 
re a d y a student of Blackstone. 
From his childhood books had been 
his chief interest and joy. Poesy 
had charmed him with her magic 
163 



xatliiam Gilmorc Simms. 



spell. Means to give the boy liber- 
al schooling seem to have been lack- 
ing. Perhaps his grandmother did 
not have large ambition for him in 
that direction. Nevertheless, since 
Charleston had many men of liberal 
culture, and was well supplied with 
the best English books, stimulus and 
opportunity for reading were not 
wanting, and we are told that the 
boy never wearied of reading. He 
had thus profited by such resources 
as came to his hand, hence possessed 
liberal information even at an early 
age. Given books and a taste for 
reading, and one can hardly venture 
to forecast the possibilities of a vifif- 
orous, healthy youth. Simms had 
written verse at seven or eight years 
of age, but before his first fee was 
in sight a Monody on Gen. Charles 
Cotesworth Pinckney had fallen 
from the press. 

In 1826 Simms was married to 
Miss Giles, of Charleston. Pie had 
not yet been admitted to the bar. 
164 



William (Bilmore Sfmms. 



This was, says Trent, "acting a 
rather serious part in life's drama 
for a poor young man of twenty." 
In 1827 appeared " Lyrical and 
Other Poems," written before he 
was nineteen. If this served no 
other purpose, it showed that a new 
mariner had launched his bark upon 
the troublous and uncertain sea of 
literature. Courage, indeed, was 
needed to venture upon that sea 
where the issue of every voyage is 
doubtful, and where so many splen- 
did argosies have sailed away into 
oblivion. Even then Hawthorne 
was ready to tempt the treacherous 
wave, only to find, for a time, sore 
discouragement and temporary lodg- 
ment at the custom - house. Poe 
was soon to feel the lashing of the 
winds and hear the thunder of the 
billows, and be wrapped about by 
the storm-cloud through which the 
sun rarely broke and the stars sel- 
dom shone. 

With no large city in the South 
2 165 ' 



William ©ilmorc Simms. 



except New Orleans, and that large- 
ly French ; with no well-equipped 
publishing house for publishing 
books, with no home market for 
such as were printed upon news- 
paper presses — how daring must 
have been the adventurer who de- 
termined to risk all with hope to 
achieve something ! But he felt 
aglow within himself the ambition 
which calls to the highest, and he 
never faltered in his belief that the 
creator of original literature holds 
among his fellows the vantage- 
point of preeminence — is the true 
Prometheus with his sacred fire. 
The will and wit to do is next to 
Omnipotence in achievement. La- 
bor is the true miracle-maker since 
the gods have departed from Olym- 
pus. Even under the social condi- 
tions then existing in the South 
many a poor boy had risen to emi- 
nence. Simms would at least tempt 
the fates in that direction. He ex- 
presses his own call : 
166 



TSilUIiam <5ilmore Bimms. 



Not in the rashness of warm confidence, 
Too vainly, self-assured that I was 
strong 
To struggle for and reach that eminence, 
Around whose rugged steeps such 
terrors throng; 
Did I resolve upon the perilous toil 

Which calls for man's best strength 
and hardihood, 
Ere he may win the height and take the 
spoil ; 
But that a spirit stronger than my 
mood 
Stood ever by and drave me to the task! 
Oh! not in vain presumption did I 
choose 
The barren honors of the unfruitful 
Nine, 
Sure that no favor from them did I 
ask; 
Small resolution did it need of mine 
To bind me to the service of the Muse! 

He had not read aright the leaves 
of the Sybil in thinking himself 
called to be a poet. 

Much has been written of the 

social and intellectual condition of 

the South during the time which 

marked the birth and earlier years 

167 



TOUiam Gilmore Simms. 



of Simms. A brief review of the 
situation is in order, since some of 
our own writers maintain an atti- 
tude of apology toward the rest of 
the world on account of the limita- 
tions and deficiencies of the South- 
ern people. Indeed, their short- 
comings were numerous enough, 
but the comparisons too often seem 
to be made between the present 
advanced culture of New England 
and the Middle States, and the 
ante-bellum or even colonial con- 
dition of the South. Literature was 
not of early and rapid growth any- 
where on the American continent. 
It is true that there were some 
buddings of literature among the 
Spanish priests in Mexico and else- 
where, but the growth was pre- 
mature. Along the banks of the 
majestic James " Ovid " was trans- 
lated, and some half-dozen sketches 
were prepared in the first dozen 
years of the Jamestown Colony ; 
but as soon as these settlers ceased 
168 



William Gilmore Simms. 



to be Englishmen the spasmodic 
fire burned itself out. The Bay 
Psalm-Book fell from the Harvard 
press in New England in a few 
years after a settlement had been 
-effected ; but the successors of that 
quaint paraphrase of David were 
dry, very dry, theological treatises. 
Because of the gathering of the 
people into towns literary effort 
attracted notice earlier in New Eng- 
land than in the South. Never- 
theless, Henry Adams, the New 
-England historian, says : " The 
names of half a dozen persons 
could hardly be mentioned whose 
memories survived by intellectual 
work made public in Massachusetts 
between 1783 and 1800." Of the 
chief city he says : " Boston made 
no strong claim to intellectual 
prominence. Neither clergy, law- 
yers, physicians, nor literary men 
were much known beyond the 
state." He speaks of the method 
of instruction at Harvard as being 
169 



•SEUUtam ©tlmore Stmms. 



"suited to children fourteen years 
of age," and further says, " The in- 
struction itself was poor and the 
discipline was indifferent." Wri- 
ting in iSco, Noah Webster, as 
quoted by Adams, says : "As to 
classical learning, history (civil and 
ecclesiastical), mathematics, astron- 
omy, chemistry, botany, and natural 
history, excepting here and there a 
rare instance of a man who is emi- 
nent in some one of these branches? 
we may be said to have no learning 
at all, or a mere smattering." He 
further says : "As to libraries, we 
have no such things. There are 
not more than three or four toler- 
able libraries in America, and these 
are extremely imperfect." 

Of early education in South 
Carolina Colyer Meriwether says : 
" But while the state and private 
persons were establishing schools 
and promoting the cause of educa- 
tion, the various charitable and re- 
ligious societies were not idle. 
170 



Wlliam (Bttmore Simms. 



They not only labored in the cen- 
ters, but carried their work to 
the farther outposts. The Presby- 
terians in the upper part of the 
state, and the Church of England 
in the lower part, placed the means 
of education within reach of all." 
Other religious bodies took a 
prominent part later on. Meri- 
wether further says : " In these va- 
rious ways schools were founded 
over the entire colony, and the 
work was not checked even by the 
Revolutionary War. At the close 
of the war there were twenty- two 
grammar-schools in the province. 
In many of these, if not in all, in- 
struction was given in Latin, Greek, 
and mathematics. . . . The quali- 
fications for teachers were high for 
that time." The dearth was not in 
higher education, but in lack of good 
schools for the very poorest — "the 
poor white trash." Many of the 
wealthier had tutors and sent their 
sons abroad to complete their edu- 
171 



H&illiam Gilmore 5imms. 



cation. Yet many of the most emi- 
nent men were educated altogether 
within the colony. 

These facts are given in answer to 
McM aster and others who have as- 
serted that there were no grammar- 
schools in South Carolina at the 
time of the Revolution. In Charles- 
ton arrangement was made as early 
as 1 710 to establish a free school 
with a preceptor " capable of teach- 
ing the Latin and Greek lan- 
guages." A literary society and 
association for establishing a libra- 
ry was founded as early as 1748. 
There appears to have been in op- 
eration another library at a much 
earlier period "under care of the 
Episcopal minister." The practical 
operation of Charleston College be- 
gan in 1 79 1. It is easy to show 
this to have been an academy called 
a college. The quotations made 
from Adams show that little else 
was to be found in the United 
States at the beginning of the pres- 
172 



TJ&UUam <3ilmore Simms. 



ent century. The Charleston col- 
lege never grew into a univer- 
sity because English schools were 
to the prosperous of that day 
what German schools are now 
to many of our people. This 
description of the intellectual ad- 
vancement of two representative 
sections of the country is intended 
to show that while ideas of govern- 
ment, and while material interests 
had advanced, higher education was 
about as well advanced in one part 
as in the other, and that literature 
could hardly be said to have made 
an appearance at all. As the cen- 
tury advanced cities sprang up 
more rapidly in the East, creating a 
clientele for writers ; and the re- 
sponse was Irving, Bryant, Long- 
fellow, Cooper, Hawthorne, and 
even Poe. William Gilmore Simms 
entered the list to represent his sec- 
tion in creative literature against 
these. How different might have 
been the result had his preparation 
173 



XGUUiam (Silmore Slmme. 



been of greater extent, equal to that 
of Legar£, for instance ! As said, 
he had not been able to avail him- 
self of such advantages as were at 
hand, but after all, who knows 
what constitutes one's real prepara- 
tion for life-work? Doubtless the 
Charleston library had been much 
more to him than Charleston col- 
lege. Without money or strong 
friends, among a people devoted to 
English classics, in a state in which 
lawyers and statesmen, as well as 
many planters, were educated 
abroad, at a time when many min- 
isters of the various Church organi- 
zations were classical scholars and 
were teachers as well as preachers, 
with an aristocratic air of conserva- 
tism brooding over all, Simms, 
" with little Latin and less Greek," 
determined to win his way to a posi- 
tion in letters. " Stronger must the 
courage grow, that's fed by con- 
stant fight" was exemplified in his 
case. 

174 



TOMUiam Oilmore Simms. 



Simms had entered upon the prac- 
tise of law at twenty-one ; and his 
fees, Trent tells us, amounted to 
$600 the first year, which was do- 
ing well for a beginner. However, 
he continued to write verse, and 
"Early Lays" was published at the 
end of the year. Soon afterward 
he abandoned the law and assumed 
the editorship of the Tablet, or 
Southern Monthly Literary Ga- 
zette, a magazine of sixty-four 
pages. This ran for a year, and, 
like Lowell's first venture, the 
Pioneer, was not a paying enter- 
prise, and was discontinued. In 
both cases the chief benefit was in 
experience to the young editors. 
The next venture might have been 
better for Simms, except for the 
storm which arose over the ques- 
tion of nullification. He had be- 
come the editor of the City Gazette* 
With his paper he vehemently 
opposed this movement which 
seemed for a time to sweep every- 
175 



TOllfam (Btlmorc Sfmms. 



thing before it and threatened to 
involve the entire nation. His op- 
position brought financial loss to 
his enterprise, but gave him an op- 
portunity to display the splendid 
personal courage in which he was 
in no degree wanting. 

It has been intimated that South 
Carolina never cared for Simms. 
Previous to the nullification move- 
ment he had been invited to deliver 
orations, and had received such con- 
sideration as usually comes to a 
young man of recognized ability, 
but of uncertain future. He now 
found himself in debt, and much 
less popular, though more widely 
known. No estimate has ever been 
made as to the number of misfor- 
tunes which may travel in close 
company. The death of his wife, 
father, and grandmother, joined 
with the burning of his house and 
the failure of his paper, would have 
crushed most men. These only 
served in the end to lead him into 
176 



William Gilmore Simms. 



a wider range of acquaintances 
and larger experience. Travel was 
destined to enlarge his knowledge, 
and perhaps his ambition also* 
Mr. Trent, on the authority of Gris- 
wold, tells us that "Atalantis, a 
Story of the Sea," was prepared for 
the press at Hingham, Mass. That 
was the most ambitious effort in 
poetry ever undertaken by Simms. 
Soon after he went to New York 
and made the acquaintance of Bry- 
ant and other men of reputation in 
letters. Bryant's interest in Simms 
proved to be lifelong. Some short 
stories, poems, and something in the 
direction of literary essays followed 
in the magazines. It was not long 
until the young author felt strong 
enough to venture upon a novel. 
Accordingly, in 1833, "Martin Fa- 
ber" appeared with the imprint of 
the Harpers. This had a fine run, 
but received some severe criticisms 
and was finally omitted by the au- 
thor himself from the collected edi- 
12 177 



TttflflUam <3ilmote Simms. 



tion of his works. From this time 
his pen was never idle. 

For the leading facts in regard 
to Simms, without endorsing all 
theories therein set forth, ac- 
knowledgment once for all is 
hereby made to " William Gilmore 
Simms " written for the " Men of 
Letters " series by the accomplished 
scholar, Prof. W. P. Trent, of 
Sewanee, Tenn. For a brief epi- 
tome no better can be offered than 
to select from the article, " Simms " 
in Appleton's " C y c lo p e d i a of 
American Biography." This arti- 
cle was written by Mrs. Margaret J. 
Preston, of Lexington, Va., a lady 
who has done much intelligent and 
sympathetic work in behalf of liter- 
ature in the South, while she her- 
self is the author of no insis:nifi- 
cant portion of what is best in 
that literature. Mrs. Preston savs 
that Mr. Simms had immense fer- 
tility, a vivid imagination, and a 
true realistic handling of whatever 
178 



TSJUUiam Gilmore Simms. 



he touched. But he was not a fin- 
ished scholar; and although Edgar 
A. Poe pronounced him the best 
novelist America had produced 
after Cooper, his style lacked fin- 
ished elegance and accuracy. Yet 
he has done much in preserving 
the early history and traditions 
and local coloring of his native 
state. The " Yemassee " is consid- 
ered his best novel. Besides the 
works already mentioned, he pub- 
lished "Martin Faber" (New 
York, 1833); the "Book of My 
Lady, a Melange" (Philadelphia, 
1833); "Guy Rivers" (2 vols., 
New York, 1834); the "Yemas- 
see" (2 vols., 1835); the "Par- 
tisan" (2 vols., 1835); "Melli- 
champe" (2 vols., 1836); "Rich- 
ard Hurdis " (2 vols., Philadelphia, 
1838); "Palayo" (New York, 
1838); "Carl Werner, and Other 
Tales" (2 vols., 1838); "South- 
ern Passages and Pictures," poems 
(1839) ; " Border Beagles " (2 vols., 
179 



William Gilmcre Simms. 



1840); the "Kinsman" (Phila- 
delphia, 1 84 1 ; republished as the 
" Scout," New York, 1854) ; " Con- 
fession, or the Blind Heart" (2 
vols., 1S42) ; " Beauchampe " (2 
vols., 1842); "Helen Halsey " 
(1845;) "Castle Dismal" (1845); 
"Count Julian" (2 vols., 1845); 
" Grouped Thoughts and Scattered 
Fancies," poems (Richmond, 1845) ; 
the " Wigwam and the Cabin, or 
Tales of the South "(two series, 
Charleston, 1845-46); "Areytos, or 
Sonars and Ballads of the South" 
(1S46); "Lays of the Palmetto" 
(1848); "Katherine Walton" 
(New York, 1S51); the " Golden 
Christmas" (1852); "Marie de 
Berniere" (1S53); "Father Ab- 
bot, or the Home Tourist " 
(1854); "Poems" (2 vols., 1854); 
the " Foray ers " ( 1855) ; the " Ma- 
roon, and Other Tales" (1855); 
" Charlemont " ( 1S56) ; " Utah " 
(1856); and the "Cassique 
180 



*TOlliam 0ilntorc Sfntms. 



of Kiawah" (i860). In 1867 be 
edited " War Poetry of the South." 
He wrote a "History of South 
Carolina" (Charleston, 1840) and 
" South Carolina in the Revolu- 
tion " (1854), and lives of Francis 
Marion (New York, 1844), Capt. 
John Smith (1846), Chevalier Bay- 
ard (1848), and Gen. Nathaniel 
Greene (1849). He wrote two 
dramas, " Norman Maurice " and 
"Michael Bonhum, or the Fall of 
the Alamo," which was acted in 
Charleston. He also wrote a 
" Geography of South Carolina " 
(1843). He edited " Seven Dramas 
Ascribed to Shakespeare," with 
notes and introductions (1848), and 
contributed many reviews to period- 
icals, two volumes of which were 
afterward collected (New York, 
1845—46). A collected edition of 
part of his works has been pub- 
lished (19 vols., New York, 1859). 
Many of Simms's writings have 
never been collected, as he was one 
3 181 



William Oilmoce Simms. 



of the most prolific of writers and 
wrote for numerous periodicals. 

This partial list, long though it 
is, has been given as published 
since it serves in jDart to explain the 
limitations of the author both as to 
matter and style. While lack of 
early advantages might have been 
largely overcome, this overproduc- 
tion prevented anything like a pol- 
lished style and careful attention to 
details. Hence passages of great 
strength and beauty are found in 
the midst of chapters of crude mat- 
ter evidently thrown together in 
great haste. 

Of a collection of short stories, 
published early, Trent says : 
" Some of them show that Simms 
was master at times of a prose style 
which, if not charming, might 
nevertheless with a little pains have 
been made distinctly graceful. Un- 
fortunately, as the years went by, 
and as the temptation to do hurried 
182 



Wllfam <5Umore Stmms* 



"work became less easy to resist, his 
style lost these early traces of pleas- 
ing qualities, and was never more 
than a serviceable style with some 
strength, but with a constant ten- 
dency to become slipshod." This 
has been too true in the case of many 
authors. Few have been able to at- 
tain a style pleasing and strong and 
maintain this in all their work. Of 
the stories written by Simms, many 
are founded on real events. No 
colony had more that was thrilling 
in its history than South Carolina. 
The upper and lower portions of 
the colony held two classes of peo- 
ple within its borders, and these 
with no great love for each other. 
Moreover, this had been the favor- 
ite province of English royalty, 
hence when the war broke out 
many prominent men sided with the 
king. On the other hand, some of 
the truest, bravest, and most self- 
sacrificing patriots of all the conti- 
tinental army were found among 
183 



X&iiliam Gilmorc Simms. 



this proud-spirited people. Natu- 
rally this resulted in fierce conflicts, 
which dyed the soil with blood, and 
brought desolation and death to 
many a home. Simms did much to 
preserve the fame of these partizan 
warriors, and the memories of their 
brave deeds. With Cooper in the 
North and Kennedy in Virginia, 
the more southern field was left to 
Simms ; and of this he had large 
knowledge, having gathered much 
in the way of unwritten history, 
legends, tales of adventure by 
scout, patriot, and pioneers. 

Although " Martin Faber " was 
the first to appear, Simms speaks 
of " Guy Rivers " " as my first de- 
liberate attempt in prose fiction," 
and further tells us that the first 
volume was written before he was 
of age. This accounts for the fact 
that " Guy Rivers " appeared in 
1834, a year after the appearance of 
" Martin Faber." It seems to be 
true that most authors have on 
184 



William ©ilmore Simms. 



hand a stock of " earlier work," 
which is put to market as soon as 
the writer attains his first recogni- 
tion, often to the great detriment of 
a rising reputation. Later in life 
the novelist fain would have im- 
proved the crudeness of that first 
volume. Nevertheless " Guy Riv- 
ers" succeeded from the day of its 
publication, passing through three 
editions and being reprinted in 
London in little more than a year. 
In his criticism of this work Trent 
says : ■" No one called * Guy Riv- 
ers ' feeble. In spite of its stilted 
style and its wooden characters, 
there was a bustle and a movement 
about it that interested an uncritical 
public. . . . Undiluted Ameri- 
canism was what many readers 
were crying for, and they got it in 
4 Guy Rivers ; ' excitement, senti- 
mentality, bombast were what 
others were crying for, and they 
got all three in * Guy Rivers.' 
What wonder, then, that the book 
185 



XClUlfam <5tlmorc Stmms. 



was popular. But, as has been 
said, these uncritical readers were 
right in holding that the author of 
c Guy Rivers ' was a man of 
ability. They were right in saying 
that he knew how to tell a story 
without allowing its interest to flag. 
They felt, moreover, that he had 
opened a new world to them, a 
world lying near their very doors 
in that year of our Lord eighteen 
hundred and thirty- four ; not an 
old world separated from them by 
thousands of miles of ocean and by 
centuries of time." The scene of 
" Guy Rivers " was laid in Georgia, 
and it was one of a number of tales 
to follow, called " Border Ro- 
mances," from the fact that the 
scenes were laid on the border of 
advancing civilization and filled 
with the wild life and adventures of 
those times of recklessness and al- 
most savagery. We can hardly 
conceive now how anything could 
have been so revolting as much of 
186 



TOllfam (Sflmore Simms. 



the speech and life of many of 
these backwoods characters ; but 
they lived and acted, and Simms 
portrayed them in what some of 
his most friendly critics considered 
too literal a realism. 

Some time after the publication of 
this book Simms returned from New 
York to Charleston to continue what 
he had now fully decided to be his 
life-work. Trent seems determined 
that modern Charleston must repent 
of treatment given Simms by the 
Charleston of that earlier time, hence 
he says : " But in Charleston he 
still found himself a nobody." The 
question arises, was this an isola- 
ted case peculiar to Charleston ? 
Among most people the idea pre- 
vails that the man from a distance 
can teach the best school, preach 
the best sermon, deliver the best 
lecture, or write the best book. Hu- 
manity places its heroes and divini- 
ties at a distance. It is Homeric to 
say, " The song mankind most 
187 



William ©ilmore Sim mo. 



heartily applauds is that which rings 
newest in their ears ;" but the old 
poet might have added from expe- 
rience that it must not be sung by a 
native singer. Some one has inti- 
mated that in Boston the passport 
to good society depends on the 
proper answer to the question : 
" What has he written ? " How- 
ever that may be, such is not the 
case elsewhere in America. In al- 
most any city the authorship of one 
or two successful books will not 
cause those who have written none, 
or only unsuccessful ones, to ex- 
press a great amount of admiration 
for one whose very success is a con- 
stant reminder of their own tardy 
progress in the race of life. A 
reputation once well established 
abroad cannot continue to be ig- 
nored at home, but too often the 
singer has " passed beyond the sun- 
set gate" before his song is heard. 
Politics strangely blinds the eyes 
188 



WUiam 0ilmore Simms. 



of men to everything good in those 
of the opposing party. When 
Simms the author of two rapidly 
selling novels returned to Charles- 
ton richer in purse, there were 
some who had not forgotten how 
bitterly Simms the editor had as- 
sailed those who favored nullifica- 
tion. That they did forgive and 
forget in time is proved by the fact 
that in after years his home became 
the focal point of interest for all the 
literary lights of that region ; that 
Paul H. Hayne, a member of one 
of the oldest and most aristocratic 
families, and the nephew of Gov. 
Hayne who favored nullification, be- 
came a life-long admirer and friend, 
and that Simms finally came to be 
the largest figure intellectually in 
Charleston, and in fact in South 
Carolina. 

Simms has told his own story in 

the dedicatory letter for the revised 

edition of " Guy Rivers," published 

twenty years later. In this letter to 

189 



INUlUam (Silmore Simms. 



Charles R. Carroll, speaking of the 
first edition of " Guy Rivers," with 
the dedication to Carroll twenty 
years before, Simms says : " Then 
we were lawyers and politicians 
upon a small scale ; lawyers, with 
quite too little devotion to Themis to 
win many of her favors ; politicians, 
with a too small knowledge of men 
to make politics a profitable invest- 
ment ; and, more amusing still, pol- 
iticians with at least one conclusive 
argument against every hope of 
personal progress, that we both en- 
tertained a wild fancy of patriotism, 
dreaming that our little world need- 
ed reformation, and that we were, 
in some degree, the very persons 
allotted to put the house of state in 
order ! . . . I need not remind 
you that the fruit of our first con- 
nection with the political struggles 
of our youth was fatal to our per- 
sonal prospects in such a career. 
The final overthrow of the party 
190 



TKHilliam (Stlmore Simms. 



with which we were allied was a 
perpetual closing of the doors of 
public life to us. I say perpetual, 
though, truth to speak, we were 
only under the ban some few years, 
and the 'era of good feeling,' in 
process of time, was the natural re- 
sult of the necessity for a new po- 
litical organization. But five years 
lost to a young politician might as 
well be an eternity ! To remain 
for that period in waiting upon the 
benches of equal hope and mortifi- 
cation would wear out the inexpress- 
ibles of the best patriot living. It 
would argue, besides, a degree of 
stolidity to which I had not the 
slightest pretension. With a few 
sighs, therefore, not so profound as 
those of Othello, I abandoned the 
profession of the patriot and poli- 
tician. My occupation for the time 
was gone ; for, cut off from poli- 
tics, I was equally cut off from law". 
The prejudices which a young begin- 
ner incurs in politics will necessarily 
191 



TKUliiam Gilmore Simms. 



follow him into the courts where his 
talents have been untried. Besides, 
I had never heartily embraced the 
profession, had never studied con 
amoi-e, and, after two years wasted 
in the dreary life of a political editor, 
I was not in training for the resump- 
tion of the severe and systematic 
methods which the law demands of 
its votaries. Literature was my only 
refuge, as it had been my first love, 
and, as I fancied, my proper voca- 
tion ; and ' Guy Rivers,' the first 
volume of which was written before 
I was of age, v/as the first of my 
regular novels. To you, my dear 
Carroll, who watched my early be- 
ginnings with so much friendly in- 
terest, I need not say that ' Guy 
Rivers,' crude of plan in many re- 
spects, awkward in consequence of 
the measured and stilted style of an 
unpractised hand, with many faults 
of taste, and some perhaps of moral, 
was yet singularly successful with 
the public. Its rapid popularity, 
192 



militant (Bilmore Sfmms. 



however unmerited, seemed to jus- 
tify me in the new profession I had 
chosen ; and the young lawyer and 
the patriot politician were naturally 
very soon sunk in the novelist and 



romancer." 



Here, let it be remarked paren- 
thetically, that while a few Caro- 
linians never gave Simms due hon- 
or, his name will remain one of the 
brightest on their roll of great names, 
and will not stand far down the list 
of pioneer American writers. So 
rich was his field, so industriously 
did he labor to overcome early dis- 
advantages, so ample were his tal- 
ents, and so persistent was his pur- 
pose in literature, that something 
was created which must last. The 
best will be sifted from the indiffer- 
ent, and take its place among things 
of permanent value. The South 
cannot afford to ignore his work r 
for, take him all in all, she has pro- 
duced few greater men — few men 
who have labored harder to give his 
13 193 



•Qdtltiam <3tlmote Stmms. 



section her true place in history and 
literature. Poe's misfortunes have 
been thought to have discouraged 
literary aspirants in the South, but 
Simms did not find the venture an 
unprofitable one, though he received 
little pay for much of his editorial 
work. His income as a lawyer 
would hardly have been greater than 
was his income from his books. His 
work was worth doing apart from its 
pecuniary and artistic value. In his 
day romance had not learned to re- 
ward the guilty and punish the 
good, nor to rake the alleys for he- 
roes, and particularly for heroines. 
Purity, modesty, goodness in wom- 
an ; courage,truth, nobility in man — 
these received reward, while the bad 
went to their own place. 

J. Wood Davidson and Paul H. 
Hayne, in sketches of Simms, fail to 
mention " Guy Rivers " in its proper 
place, but Davidson puts it twenty 
years later, at the time of the revised 
edition. The omission is difficult to 
194 



William <5ilmore Simms. 



explain, since Griswold had given 
the proper order of these works long 
before. The busy author did not 
pause to enjoy his honor, but in a 
few months a two- volume romance 
was ready for publication. The 
"Yemassee, a Romance of Carolina," 
was published in the spring of 1835. 
Many consider this the high- water 
mark of the author. The tale is 
based on the history of the war of 
extermination waged against the 
Yemassee Indians after their attempt 
to massacre the whites of South Car- 
olina. The first edition was exhaust- 
ed in three days, and three editions 
were issued in a year. In this work 
Simms does some admirable sketch- 
ing of characters. As we under- 
stand Indians now, these given us 
from the Yemassees are more nearly 
the real Indian than some of the 
fawning idealized beings presented 
as such by Cooper. The Yemassees 
were long friendly to the whites, but, 
alarmed by gradual encroachments 
195 



TKftilliam Oilmcrc Simms. 



upon their hunting - grounds, they 
first become sullen, then listen to 
the Spaniards until a general mas- 
sacre is resolved upon. But Gov. 
Craven has been among them in dis- 
guise, learned their plans, and is pre- 
pared to succor the frontiersmen. 
The Governor has fallen in love 
with the pretty daughter of a Puri- 
tan preacher living on the border 
between whites and Indians. But 
to quote again, Trent says : u In his 
description of the brave and hand- 
some Gov. Craven, who mingled in 
disguise among the doughty fron- 
tiersmen, and, as Capt. Gabriel Har- 
rison, foils Indians and pirates, and 
wins the love of the fair Bess Math- 
ews, daughter of the strict old 
Puritan preacher, he is undoubtedly 
following Scott. In his descrip- 
tion of the noble Sanutee, the well- 
beloved of the Yemassees, and of 
his wife Matiwan and their son Oc- 
conestoga; in his animated account 
of the attack on the block-house, 
196 



•oailliam Oilmore Simms. 



and of Harrison's adventures in the 
Indian village, he is as undoubtedly 
following Cooper. In his descrip- 
tion of trackless swamp and slug- 
gish river, of the deadly serpent 
lurking in the center of luxuriant 
groves, of the faithful slave who 
will not aceept his freedom, he 
strikes out for himself, and proves 
that he has a right to a distinct place 
among iVmerican men of letters. 
But when he wearies his readers 
with hairbreadth escapes, with te- 
dious love-scenes, and with the af- 
fected humor of very lack-humorous 
characters ; when he is careless in 
his grammar and pompous in his 
diction, one confesses with a sigh 
that it is his own fault that his posi- 
tion as a writer is not more secure." 
A little farther on in the same 
connection Prof. Trent says : " He 
owes the fact that he never rose to 
the front rank, even of his own coun- 
try's writers, to the limitations im- 
posed upon him by his Southern 
4 197 



tUilliani Oilmcre Gimms. 



birth." Elsewhere the same author, 
after descanting upon the direful con- 
sequences of slavery, says : " Under 
such conditions and with his inher- 
ited qualities, it is no wonder that 
the Southerner of the days of nulli- 
fication was inferior to his revolu- 
tionary sire." Now this degenera- 
tion from contact with slavery ought 
not to have borne so severely upon 
Simms, since he had won his place 
before he became a slave owner. 
Nor does it seem to have weakened 
Poe, who spent his childhood as the 
adopted son of a wxalthy man, pre- 
sumably a slaveholder. Nor did it 
change the fact that two out of the 
three greatest orators of the nation 
were from slavcholding states. Nor 
did it seem to have a deteriorating 
influence upon the courage of South- 
ern soldiers, or the ability of their 
commanders. Moreover, this same 
soldier, thus enervated by slavery, 
showed wonderful powers of recu- 
peration when left broken in fi- 
198 



•raiilam (Silmore Simms. 



nances ; nor did it take many ages 
under a Southern sun to recover 
ability sufficient for a movement all 
along the lines of literature as soon 
as literature came to have a larger 
share of honor and reward. We 
have been told repeatedly that the 
South could have had no literature 
under slavery, since men did not 
dare tell the truth about their sec- 
tion — their institution. The best lit- 
erature touches the larger rather 
than the local mind. Shakespeare 
hardly told all the truth about the 
polities of his time ; Milton found it 
convenient to deal with beings of the 
upper and nether worlds rather than 
with the affairs of King Charles. 
Possibly Virgil found ^Eneas a safer 
subject to depict than some tilings 
pertaining to Caesar. 

This is no defense of slavery, but 
the aphorism of Debow may be put : 
the plow, then the pen. The South 
went through the experience of de- 
velopment, and part of that devel- 
199 



TOlliam GUmorc Simms. 



opment carried with it the cultiva- 
tion of raw material on the planta- 
tion. The planter owned his ten- 
ants, and sometimes oppressed them, 
though hardly more than some cor- 
porations oppress their laborers now. 
However, what was the usual con- 
dition is aptly set forth by Richard 
Malcolm Johnson, as follows : "A 
Southern planter was guarded by 
the most efficient police under the 
sun. The planter knew that, hardly 
more than his children, would his 
own slaves be tempted to rob him 
or otherwise molest his repose. . . . 
The world did never — and hence- 
forth, in all likelihood, it never will 
— understand the confidential, affec- 
tionate relations between Southern 
planters and their slaves." No man 
understands this matter better than 
the writer just quoted. This state 
of affairs shows that Southern peo- 
ple did not suppose that they held 
great sins and enormities hidden 
away which must not be mentioned 
200 



William 0ilmore Simms. 



— which forbid all free exercise of 
literary endeavor. Many deplored 
the evil under which they found 
themselves placed, but felt no guilty 
sense of personal responsibility, 
hence any dearth of purely literary 
writings must be explained, in part 
at least, from other causes. Johnson 
compares the South to Rome in 
having no Homers to sing of its he- 
roes, and further says : " It was the 
South's misfortune to be isolated 
from the rest of mankind, and so to 
l>e comparatively unknown to them. 
Knowing this, and feeling conscious 
that they were striving honorably to 
do whatever was best in existing 
conditions, its planters kept them- 
selves involved in proud self-respect, 
and became too indifferent to extend 
their ideas and perpetuate their his- 
tory. With this feeling its men of 
letters wrote no annals, no sketches 
of social or domestic life. It was a 
great mistake, and a greater misfor- 



tune." 



201 



William Oilmote Simms. 



The year 1835 was a very prolific 
one with Simms. In addition to the 
M Yemassee " in two volumes, the 
" Partisan " likewise saw the light. 
This was a romance in two volumes, 
founded on history and traditions of 
the Revolution. Hayne says that the 
day of its publication " might well, 
after the Roman fashion, have been 
marked by the author with a "white 
stone." During these first years of 
his work others were in the field. 
" Cavaliers of Virginia," by Dr. 
William Caruthers, was published 
in 1832; J. P. Kennedy published 
"Swallow Barn" in 1832; and 
" Horseshoe Robinson " appeared 
the same year as the " Partisan," 
covering similar ground. Poe had 
taken his hundred-dollar prize for 
"MS. Found in a Bottle" in 1833, 
and Thomas W. White had issued at 
Richmond, in August, 1S34, the first 
number of the " Southern Literary 
Messenger." Poe had become the 
editor of the " Messenger " when 
202 



TOlltam ©ilmore Sfmms. 



the " Partisan " appeared, and de- 
voted five columns to a discussion of 
its merits and demerits. The latter 
Poe never allowed to escape his 
barbed pen, though he was the friend 
and admirer of Simms till death. 
The " Partisan " was the first of a 
trilogy which was completed in 1850 
by the publication of " Katharine 
Walton," " Mellichampe," the sec- 
ond of the series, having been issued 
in 1836. In these books is contained 
much of the author's very best wri- 
ting. The faults which kept him 
below Cooper in so many instances 
are not wanting, but Marion, Sump- 
ter, Gates, Cornwallis, and Tarleton 
live anew. Not only that, but char- 
acters of force are created. Brave 
Porgy, with his appetite, and hu- 
morous philosophy, will not readily 
drop from literature ; in fact, the 
author can not let him go at the end 
of one book. Some call him a copy 
of Falstaff. Both are large, and 
both talk, but there the resemblance 
203 



tamtam (Bllmore Simms. 



ends. Porgy has been supposed in 
many instances to voice the senti- 
ments of Simms himself. 

While here and there a Southern- 
er was becoming prominent in let- 
ters, these advancing waves were 
destined to recede, for a while at 
least. The forces were too much 
scattered. When a new movement 
in literature occurred in the East a 
few years later the principal actors 
were grouped near enough to en- 
courage each other and to become 
mutually helpful. In fact, Longfel- 
low, when praised by a contem- 
porary, was said to be " insured in 
the Mutual, since what one of the 
coterie wrote the others praised." 
Mrs. Preston says of the scattered 
plantation life of the South : " It 
made against the creation of literary 
centers ; it segregated the educated 
and literary men, and so rendered 
ineffective an influence which, if 
massed, might have been powerful." 
She further says : u Southern litera- 
204 



TKHtUiam 0ilmore Sfmms. 



lure has run in the line of state pa- 
pers and national speeches and sen- 
atorial debates and patriotic orations. 
„ . . Madison and Monroe chose 
to spend their strength upon state 
papers rather than upon the ele- 
gance of letters, Wirt, with his 
charm of style, might have been al- 
most a Geoffrey Crayon, but politics 
overruled him. Kennedy could 
easily have disputed laurels with 
Cooper, had not his native Maryland 
iound more important work for him 
to do. Legare might have written 
works on international law equal to 
others, had not South Carolina need- 
ed him for something else. There 
have been multitudes of strangled 
poets who had the spirit of song 
choked out by surrounding circum- 
stances. Public Southern opinion 
decided that there was something 
more virile to do than to spend one's 
days in polishing tropes." Simms 
was the one ante-bellum Southerner 
who remained in his section and 
205 



XlHUliam <3Umoce Stmms. 



gave himself to creative literature ; 
but even he was repeatedly editor, 
and sometimes coquetted with poli- 
tics. There came a time when the 
South had no political leadership, 
the best intellects needed other 
forms of activity, hence " the recent 
movement in Southern literature." 
The author speaks of "Melli- 
champe," which followed the " Par- 
tisan," as an episode in the progress 
of that romance, rather than a con- 
tinuation of the story, though " the 
events made use of are all histor- 
ical." He assures us that the per- 
sonages and exciting events are real, 
having only the names slightly 
veiled in fiction. 

In 1836, the year of the publica- 
tion of " Mellichampe," Simms was 
again happily married. His wife 
was Miss Chevilette Roach, the 
only child of a wealthy planter of 
Barnwell District, S. C. Thence- 
forth, during a portion of the year 
at least, the novelist resided at 
206 



William (Silmore Simms. 



" "Woodlands," the house of his fa- 
ther-in-law. This became his own 
property in time, and here was col- 
lected his library of ten thousand 
volumes, which was burned during 
the war. Here he received several 
visits from William Cullen Bryant ; 
here were often gathered around his 
board men of national repute in lit- 
erature, as well as the notables of 
his own state. With a growing 
reputation, with a liberal sale of his 
works, it is not strange that he 
added to his material resources, for 
he was ever accounted a good busi- 
ness man. 

" Woodlands " was open to neigh- 
bors as well as to distinguished 
guests from abroad. The South 
Carolinian loves his home and his 
state by nature, and Simms was far 
from being an exception. Paul H. 
Hayne says : "As Scott loved the 
heather, as Whittier loves the 
mountains, the lakes, the calm river- 
banks, the green meadows of New 
207 



•Qdilliam Oilmorc Simms. 



England, so with as deep, unfalter- 
ing a passion Simms adored the 
sultry pine barrens, the luxuriant 
swamps, the desolate seaside soli- 
tudes of the state of his nativity. 
And, as he loved her scenery he 
upheld and vindicated her historic 
fame." " Woodlands," with its live- 
oaks and long-leaf pines, was said to 
have been a beautiful place. In the 
years which followed the tireless 
pen of Simms was active on all 
lines. Romances, each having some 
specific field and giving a picture of 
some particular time, numerous 
poems, biographies, reviews, and 
much editorial work followed with 
rapidity. For several terms he was 
a member of the Legislature, was 
within one vote of Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor. Men of less force had been 
Governors, Congressmen, and Uni- 
ted States Senators. Simms felt 
this, and complained bitterly at rare 
intervals, but lived happily and used 
208 



TEHUliam (SUmore Sim me* 



his influence with the press to en- 
courage younger literary m e n ► 
Hayne, Timrod, and others bore 
testimony to that fact. RusselVs 
Magazine^ with Hayne as editor, 
was evolved at one of Simms's sup- 
pers. 

" Katharine Walton," the com- 
pleting volume of the trilogy de- 
voted to the Revolution, as said, 
did not appear until 1850. Simms 
had studied the field closely before 
writing this romance, and Hayne 
tells us that this is the only true pic- 
ture of Charleston during the time 
in which the city was held by the 
British. The work reads more like 
history than fiction on many of its 
pages. The author did not by any 
means drop the Revolutionary War 
with these works. This sketch 
must draw to a close, and in the 
pages allotted little can be said of a 
critical nature, nor can an outline of 
the romances be attempted. His 
faults are readily apparent. He saw 
14 209 



KRUliam (Bilmore Simms. 



them himself and pointed them out 
even when he made no serious ef- 
fort to mend them. Few men have 
written so much, and especially with 
such rapidity. The " Partisan," 
" Mellichampe," "Katharine Wal- 
ton," the " Scout," " Forayers," " Eu- 
taw," " Woodcraft," carry the read- 
er through the entire Revolutionary 
period. No one having an interest 
in the early history of the nation 
can afford to neglect any of the 
series. The author knew his field 
and loved his pictures. Georgia, 
in " Guy Rivers ; " Kentucky, in 
M Beauchampe " and " Charlemont ;" 
Alabama, in " Richard Hurdis ; " 
Mississippi, in " Border Beagles ;" 
and Carolina, in the " Yemassee " — 
are all portrayed as to their earlier 
scenes with a faithfulness not found 
elsewhere. In " Vasconselas " De 
Soto marches in stately procession. 
Most of his novels are accessible 
in an edition of ten volumes, pub- 
210 



T&iilliam ©tlmore Simms. 



lished in 1882 by A. C. Armstrong 
& Son, of New York. The author 
deserves an edition with better 
print and paper containing more of 
his writings. These works will 
have an increasing value for the his- 
torian, as they present such invalu- 
able pictures of colonial and rev- 
olutionary times, as well as ac- 
curate portraits of the people of 
periods which will never cease to 
be of interest. Not only is the 
painting true to life, but the action 
does not fail of interest. The 
haunting desire for poetic expres- 
sion seemed to elude Simms in his 
poetry, but often came with rare 
grace and fancy to enrich the de- 
scriptive passages of his prose. 
With part of the year at "Wood- 
lands " and part at Charleston, 
with frequent trips to the North, 
Simms passed the years till the war. 
He made a few lecture trips, edited 
for a time the Southern and West- 
em Monthly Magazine and Re- 
211 



XvIUUiam Gilmcrc Sttnme. 



view/ in 1849 became editor of the 
Southern Quarterly, wrote his bi- 
ographies, and did a vast amount of 
hack work. As the years advanced, 
like many others who had opposed 
nullification, he wrote and talked in 
favor of secession. At the break- 
ing out of the war he ardently took 
sides with his state. 

He had not had all sunshine at 
" Woodlands." Two sons had been 
stricken with yellow fever and died. 
Afterward he buried other chil- 
dren. Hayne says : " The fire- 
demon followed Simms with a cu- 
rious pertinacity. He lost a house 
in Summerville, S. C, while his first 
wife lived, with most of his books. 
His Charleston house was destroyed 
in i860. The first dwelling at 
'Woodlands,' the fine old brick house^ 
was burned in 1862, when $3,000 was 
sent him by his friends to rebuild. 
The mansion then constructed was 
the one which perished under the 
stealthy torch of the negroes, led on 
212 



TKHUlfam GUmote Sfmms. 



by a sable Judas, the recipient for 
half a century of unlimited confi- 
dence and kindness — an utter vil- 
lain, who ought to have been hanged 
higher than Haman." His library 
was saved from the fire in 1862, 
but was lost in the fire at the close 
of the war. Simms did little work 
during the war. Hayne says he 
was dazed, the tragedy was too real. 
He was present at the burning of 
Columbia, and his account of that 
event has hardly been surpassed in 
vividness of description. 

Simms found himself broken in 
finances at the close of the war — as 
what Southerner did not? But a 
greater calamity had come in the 
midst of the rain of fire and blood 
which devastated a land. In 1863 
he lost his faithful, loving wife. 
For a time his reason almost reeled, 
and protracted fever followed. He 
visited Hayne in 1866. Hayne says : 
" I could not but remark how aged 
he had become. . . . His hair 
5 213 



Militant 0ilmorc Simms. 



was thinned and white, his beard 
grizzled, his fine forehead scarred 
with wrinkles, and over the once 
fiery eyes a film rested as of un- 
shed tears." For the sake of his 
children, in 1868, he took contracts 
for three books to be worked on at 
the same time. He finished two in 
less than a year, but broke down on 
the third. Eleven months of con- 
tinued physical suffering followed. 
The end drew near. His bosom 
friend, Rev. James Miles, stood by 
his death-bed and received his falter- 
ing but fervent confession of faith 
in the mercy of the atoning Christ. 
June 11, 1870, two days after the 
death of Dickens, Simms closed a 
life marked by high hopes realized 
in part, a life filled with labors such 
as few mortals have attempted. 

Perhaps fifty volumes of good 
size would not contain all he has 
written. If several of his stories, 
with their hard rides, hard fighting, 
and daring adventures, were put in 
214 



TOiUiam (Bilmore Simms. 



convenient shape, surely boys who 
relish feats of courage and endur- 
ance would read them with some- 
thing of the interest once felt in 
thrilling adventure by healthy, nat- 
ural boys before the days in which 
the surging of lawless passions af- 
fords so many of the thrilling fea- 
tures of fiction. These tales of a 
time which now seems olden so 
breathe of the life of the people 
that they appear to have grown nat- 
urally out of the soil. There was 
strength, intense action, often great 
power, in much that he wrote. 
Right loyal was he to his native 
land, and well did he know and 
deeply did he love her history and 
traditions. He would have liked 
political honor had it come to him 
as a fitting reward to his efforts to 
help his section create a literature, as 
with him literature was before all, 
and infinitely higher than alL Hard- 
ly any man ever attempted so many 
lines, doing so large an amount 
215 



TOlliam Otlmore Simms. 



of work with a fair share of suc- 
cess in each. An admirer says : 
" Simms must live as a man of let- 
ters — a novelist, historian, biogra- 
pher, editor, pamphleteer, and poet." 
In this limited space little can be 
said of his poetry. First and last 
several volumes came from his pen. 
Perhaps above all things did he de- 
sire to be a great poet. He was not 
the first to be mocked with the de- 
sire, and yet be denied the divine 
faculty to create some enduring bit 
of song. There are bits of real po- 
etry here and there, but oftener in 
his prose than in his verse. " Nor- 
man Maurice " is his best drama ; 
"Atalantis" is his most ambitious 
poem. The " Silent City " is per- 
haps his best. No single short 
poem stands out preeminent. His 
poetical works are out of print. 
Hardly a very small volume of real 
value could be selected from all he 
wrote. " Southern Passages and 
Pictures" catches the sweet breath 
216 



TOllfam Gilrnore Sfmmg. 



of the languid, sensuous South oft- 
ener than any other of his verse. 
Though much of his poetry has 
stonger lines and even stronger stan- 
zas, the following is a fair specimen : 

Shines in mid-heaven the summer sun, 
Green the gay robes which the woods 

have won, 
And far aloft, o'er the snowy fleece 
Of clouds that brood in the realm of 

peace, 
Spreads the great arch, with a deepening 

blue, 
That meetly, with beauty, still bounds 

the view; 
The swallow flits, with a joyous cry, 
From the shadowed eaves to the open sky, 
And the vulture stoops, in his eager 

spring, 
'Neath the sudden flash of his arrowy 

wing. 
O, freed is the earth from her winter 

trance, 
And the young summer hath her inher- 
itance; 
The surly monarch of storm no more 
Darkens the realm he ruled before; 
His scepter, where late he smote the 

wood, 
Lord of the somber solitude, 
217 



TOlUliam (SUmore Simms. 



Broken, away in his fear he flies 

To the kindred glooms of his Northern 

skies; 
And a chirp and a song now cheer the 

hours, 
And the very grave wears a robe of 

flowers. ' 

She comes the summer so blessing, and 
earth 

Bounds, with a wing, to a better birth; 

She breathes o'er the plain, and a thou- 
sand eyes 

Open at once in a world of dyes; 

Blue and purple, the buds unfold, 

Happy and bright in their green and 
gold; 

Daisies, that speak for the virgin heart, 

Lowly but sweet by the path upstart; 

And pinks, that promise for hopes of 
youth, 

Blossom with others that speak for truth. 

O, joyous freedom from hostile thrall, 
That brings the blessing and bloom to 

all, 
That on rock and valley, height and 

plain, 
Bestows the sun and the smile again ; 
That only breathes upon winter's brow, 
And breaks his fetters and melts his 

snow; 

218 



TOlttam (SUmore Simma. 



That smiles upon autumn's withered 

bower, 
And straightway it glories in fruit and 

flower. 
And but whispers the sons of men, and 

they seem 
Like children blessed with a joyous 

dream. 

O, the glad summer, how bright her eye, 
How sweet her breath and how soft her 

sky, 
How wondrous her magic power to bless 
With the bloom of the garden the wil- 
derness — 
To crown the wild thorn with the golden 

flower, 
To bathe the sad earth with the genial 

shower, 
To foster the strength in the breast of 

toil, 
And hallow with bounty the niggard 

soil, 
Glad the broad fields with the sunripe 

grain, 
Till we dream of the age of gold again. 

Of Simms in his personality it 

may be said that those who knew 

him best loved him most; that he 

was a man of stainless honor, strict 

219 



*0OUliam Gilmore Simme. 



integrity, and a great lover of what 
might be denominated fair play. A 
good dinner and a good story were 
ever to his taste. He dispensed 
hospitality with an open hand, but 
did not always allow his guests to 
interfere with his hours of work, 
though he was a man of rare pow- 
ers of conversation, and greatly en- 
joyed the company of friends. 

Hayne gives an account of how he 
sat and watched the pen glide over the 
paper while Simms wrote Some 
marvelous accounts are given of the 
rapidity with which he turned off 
manuscript. Notwithstanding this, 
he studied his fields so closely that, 
as Poe intimated, he did not depend 
enough upon his imagination, did not 
idealize enough. His narrative reads 
too much like history. His charac- 
ters are people in whose history 
we can easily become interested, but 
his men and women ever remain on 
the outside, and do not come into our 
220 



William (Bflmore Simms. 



lives and become part of our spir- 
itual furnishing. No more fitting 
close can be given this too imper- 
fect sketch of Simms than by quo- 
ting again from his faithful and sym- 
pathizing friend, Paul H. Hayne : 
" Simms was indeed a typical South- 
erner of the ante-bellum period, a 
period which not a few nowadays, 
calling themselves Southerners, are 
in the habit of despising, depre- 
ciating, or referring to 'with bated 
breath ' as the ' epoch of darkness 
and Egyptian bondage.' Yes, a 
virile and upright spirit, constitu- 
tionally incapable of fraud or mean- 
ness, and chastened at last into pa- 
thetic gentleness ; a man greater 
than his works, produced, as they 
had been, under circumstances of 
peculiar trial, but of which, never- 
theless, it may be predicted, Non 
Omnem M oritur am. ," 
221 



P5 



No. 5. 



Ten Cents* 






Pioneers of « * 



oatfeern Oferature 



4 



3oftn Pettdleton Kennedy 



iobn esten gooke 

atrt> 

Otfter Southern novelists 

$&V Samuel Blbert Xinft 



Barbee & Smttb, agents 

Nashville, Tenxi. 





f 



1 

Pioneers of Southern Literature. 



8 



BY SAMUEL ALBERT LINK. 



Much has been written of ".the recent move- 
ment in Southern Literature," but little has been 
said of those pioneers who wrought while litera- 
ture brought neither fame nor remuneration. With 
love for literature and love for the South, these 
toiled upward in the night. They deserve more 
than a mere passing notice. As precursors of the 
"new day" they should not be forgotten by their 
own people. For some years this writer has gath- 
ered material covering the period preceding and 
immediately subsequent to the war, and now em- 
bodies some of the Jresults in a series of ten book- 
lets, hoping that these may not be without value to 
those who cherish interest in the history of South- 
ern life and thought, as well as to those engaged in 
the work of education. 

The booklets will be issued at intervals under 
the following titles: 

No. i. A Glance at the Field. Here a Tale; 
There a Song. 

No. a. Paul Hamilton Hayne, Poet Laureate ol 
the South. 

No. 3. Dr. Frank O. Ticknor, the Southern Lyr- 
ic Poet; and Henry Timrod, the Unfortu- 
nate Singer. 

No. 4. William Gilmore Simms : The Novelist, 
the Poet. 

No. 5. John P. Kennedy, John Esten Cooke, and 
Other Southern Novelists. 

No. ,6. Edgar Allan Poe : A Genius in Story and 
Song. 

No. 7. War Poets of the South. Singers on 
Fire. 

No. 8. Singers in Various Keys:John R. Thomp- 
son, James Barron Hope, Henry Lynden 
Flash, and Others. 

No. 9. Southern Humorists ; Longstreet, Bald- 
win, Hooper, W. T. Thompson, Davy Crock- 
ett, and Others. 

No. 10. Political Writers and Historians. 

Such division has been made as will in some 

measure cover the entire field from the earliest 

times until about 3S70, when the leading magazines 

were thrown open to Southern writers. 

A bibliography of the writers considered will be 

included in the last booklet of the series. 

Price, 10c. per Number, Post-paid. 
Pardee <5c Smith, Jxgcnts, 

Nas&v212e, Tc*un. 

Copyright*: I, 1851*1, by Uurl-ee & Smith, A.fenU. 



*.' 






o 


"J 




©^ 




S3 

S*3 


- 




" 


6 





(4 

rSobn penfclefon 1senne&$; 

I N Tuckerman's " Life of Kenne- 
dy" is told a story which illus- 
JL trates the relative social advan- 
tages of politics and literature in 
ante-bellum days. Washington Irv- 
ing and Kennedy were making a 
journey together in the western 
part of New York. The two, fa- 
tigued by travel, arrived at a crowded 
hotel late at night, and found their 
request for rooms refused. Mr. 
Kennedy took the landlord aside 
and suggested that the popular au- 
thor, Irving, was entitled to special 
consideration. Not knowing that 
the gentleman who addressed him 
was one of the party, the landlord 
said : " Never heard of him, but 
that gentleman with him shall have 
a room ; he has been in Congress 
and Secretary of the Navy.'" The 




m copies Rceetvi 

vva k i a H h\ c^ 



5obn ipenfcleton IkcnneDg. 

story of Mr. Kennedy's career apart 
from his work in literature is of 
great interest, since he lived through 
a large portion of the formative pe- 
riod of the American nation, and 
knew intimately a large number of 
the men who directed affairs. Be- 
sides, he was no unimportant factor 
in the councils of a great party 
noted for its large number of strong 
intellects. 

In 1 814 a little army of volun- 
teers and citizen-soldiers marched 
from Baltimore in the direction of 
Washington, with the vain hope of 
saving the capital of the nation. 
Among that number was John P. 
Kennedy, a youth of nineteen just 
from college. From that time un- 
til his death, in 1870, he had more 
or less interest in public affairs. 
Once a member of the President's 
Cabinet, three times in Congress, 
three times a member of the Mary- 
land Legislature, a lawyer of abili- 
ty and a writer of no mean repute, 
224 



$obn penDleton ItenneDg* 

for nearly or quite a half- century, 
he knew not only the ablest public 
men, but the greatest lawyers and 
best writers of this country, besides 
meeting many of those from abroad. 
To know his life is to know the 
political and literary history of the 
country through a long and impor- 
tant period of time. For many 
years he was one of the accepted 
leaders of the great Whig party, 
making many addresses and often 
occupying the same platform with 
Clay and other great leaders. Much 
of the time business interests other 
than law and politics engaged his at- 
tention ; but, notwithstanding these 
drafts upon his time and strength, 
soon after his death, in 1870, his 
works were published, and consisted 
of ten volumes. Among these were 
three novels popular in their day — 
a political satire, a memoir of the 
life of Wirt in two volumes — be- 
sides numerous essays and ad- 
dresses. 

225 



5obn penoleton "ftenne&B. 

Mr. Kennedy's birthplace was 
Baltimore. This was also his place 
of residence most of his life, though, 
his mother being a native of Vir- 
ginia, her son came to be very fa- 
miliar with the country and people 
there. Many journeys were made 
on horseback over portions of the 
state, particularly during the sum- 
mers. His mother was a Pendle- 
ton, and was related to many dis- 
tinguished people in Virginia and 
other states. Through his mother 
he was cousin to Philip Pendleton 
and John Esten Cooke, and was re- 
lated to David Strother, the artist, 
and author of the "Porte Crayon n 
sketches. John Kennedy, the father 
of the subject of this sketch, was of a 
Scottish family. One branch crossed 
over to Ireland, and, in part at least, 
finally reached America. John Ken- 
nedy came from the North of Ire- 
land, and became a merchant in 
Baltimore. He was married to Miss 
Nancy Pendleton, a daughter of 
226 



3obn jpenDleton 1lfcenneD2. 

Philip Pendleton, of Martinsburg, 
Va., in 1794. Of his father, J. P. 
Kennedy says : " My father was 
^a kind and excellent man. . . . He 
was respected and loved by his 
townsmen and was an upright, lib- 
eral, true-hearted man, who always , 
did his duty and stood by his friend. 
He was involved in some unlucky- 
speculations in 1804 by his partner, 
Mr. Benjamin Cox, which resulted 
in bankruptcy in 1809." A rich 
bachelor brother, Anthony Kenne- 
dy, who resided near Philadelphia, 
paid off the debts and enabled the 
father of John P. Kennedy to con- 
tinue in business in a small way. 
That same Anthony finally left 
about $70,000 to the four sons of 
his brother John, of Baltimore. 

The Kennedys were Presbyteri- 
ans ; hence John P« Kennedy, who 
was born October 25, 1795, was 
duly baptized by a minister of that 
Church. He was sent to school at 
-quite an early age, having various 
227 



5obn penoleton *fcenneoB, 

teachers, some indifferent, some 
good ; one, Mr. William Sinclair, 
becoming his friend and guide for 
many years. A miscellaneous ca- 
reer of authorship was pursued by 
the ambitious boy, while an ill- 
planned effort was made to master 
almost all studies. In an autobiog- 
raphy, taken up from time to time, 
but never made very full, Kennedy 
says : " I studied Greek a whole 
winter, by rising before daylight. 
I read Locke, Hume, Robertson ; 
all the essayists and poets, and many 
of the metaphysicians; studied 
Burke, Taylor, Barrow ; worked at 
chemistry, geometry, and the high- 
er mathematics, although I never 
loved them ; made copious notes on 
all the subjects that came within 
my study; sketched, painted (very 
badly) ; read French, Spanish, and 
began German ; copied large por- 
tions of Pope's translations of Ho- 
mer, and wrote critical notes upon 
it as I went along ; in short, I thor- 
228 



5obn iPenDleton ftenned^ 

oughly overworked myself through 
a number of years in these pursuits, 
gaining much less advantage by the 
labor than, I am confident, I could 
have secured, with better guidance, 
in half the time. In this reference 
to my studies I have run somewhat 
ahead of the due course of my nar- 
rative. What I have said applies 
rather to my college life than to 
that period when I was under the 
preparations of the academy." 

Kennedy remembers himself to 
have been a thoughtless youth 
while living in town, but his over- 
strained efforts at study and author- 
ship began in 1809 when his father 
removed to " Shrub Hill," a cottage 
in the country. On account of feeble 
health his mother traveled a great 
deal, always ending the circuit with 
a stay of a month or two at Mar- 
tinsburg, Va. The embryo author 
was her companion much of the 
time. He says : " My college life, 
I may say, began in 1808, when I 
229 



3obn Pendleton ftenneos. 

was thirteen years old, and ended 
with a diploma in 1812. I entered 
the Baltimore College at its first 
establishment. ... In the four 
years of my college career I went 
through the usual course of Latin 
and Greek authors ; a short and im- 
perfect system of mathematics, in 
which I took the smallest interest ; 
some physical science done up in a 
very meager volume ; and, along 
with these, a barren and absurd 
scheme of logic in Latin, and some 
incomprehensible metaphysics. 
French I acquired with considerable 
accuracy, and could speak and write 
it tolerably well. I got some little 
Spanish also, though not much." 
" Shrub Hill " was near enough for 
college to be reached by pony or the 
gig. Not the least important thing 
connected with the college was a 
debating society. Of this young 
Kennedy continued a member for 
some years after graduation. Dur- 
ing life he continued to have a high 
230 



5obn iPenDleten *StenneD^» 

opinion of the usefulness of such 
societies. This debating society 
drifted him to the law as inevitably 
as fate, though in the meantime had 
come his soldier episode. Balti- 
more was for a time an extensive 
military garrison, with all the ex- 
citement incident to such situation. 

The troops with which young 
Kennedy marched took part in the 
battle of Bladensburg, and were 
hardly as successful as the troops at 
Fort McHenry when Key wrote 
the " Star- Spangled Banner." 

After his brief military experi- 
ence Mr. Kennedy continued his 
law studies, entering the office of 
Walter Dorsey, Esq., an eminent 
practitioner of Baltimore. This 
city, numbering five thousand in 
Revolutionary days, had increased 
in population and importance. The 
foremost lawyers, the chief actors, 
and not a few noted newspaper 
men had graced its precincts. Will- 
iam Pinkney, minister to England, 
231 



5obn PenMeton IftennedE. 

United States Senator, Attorney- 
General, soldier, orator, and schol- 
ar, made his home in Baltimore, 
and added to its fame. His son, 
Edward Coate Pinkney, 'wrote two 
poems, which still hold a place in 
all collections of best American 
poetry. David Hoffman and Brantz 
Mayer were not unknown as wri- 
ters in their day. Edgar Allan 
Poe lived for a time in the "City 
by the Sea." Jared Sparks, John 
Pierpont, John Neal, and other 
knights of the pen dwelt there for 
a time. The city had some resem- 
blance to an English town, and was 
possessed of an air of genial culture 
and good fellowship, most of the 
better families being intimate ac- 
quaintances and friends. A library 
existed, and reading was the fash- 
ion. Naturally a young man of 
Kennedy's taste would divide time 
between law and literature, contrib- 
uting ever and anon to the papers. 
He was admitted to the bar and be- 
232 



5obn penDleton ftenneDtN 

gan practise in 1816. While the 
practise was in a measure distaste- 
ful, he was a great admirer of law- 
yers, as shown in his " Life of 
Wirt " and in " Swallow Barn." 

The bar of Baltimore was re- 
nowned at that time, and, in fact, in 
the South in ante-bellum days law- 
yers more largely than any other class 
possessed literary discrimination and 
ability. Those who knew Mr. Ken- 
nedy at that early period claimed for 
him special adaptation for his cho- 
sen pursuit. Letters wooed him 
anon. For a while he was editor of 
the Baltimore American. Later, 
with a Mr. Cruse, he issued from 
time to time the " Red Book," an 
anonymous collection of prose and 
verse somewhat similar to the " Sal- 
magundi" of Irving and Paulding,, 
This appeared at intervals for two 
years, and was chiefly advantageous 
for the practise in writing which it 
gave the young men. 

From 1820 Mr. Kennedy was 
233 



5obn penoleton IKenneoE. 

drawn more and more into public 
life, being in demand as a speaker 
at political meetings. Of his speak- 
ing it is said : " There was a mag- 
netic charm about his manner, and 
often a finished cadence or quiet 
humor in his tone, which, combined 
with the good sense upon which his 
appeal or protest was based, secured 
him respectful attention and encour- 
aging sympathy." He was what 
might be called a charter member 
of the Whig party, favoring John 
Quincy Adams, and supporting the 
various Whig candidates, state and 
national. His first term in the 
Maryland Legislature began in 
1820. He was reelected for the 
two following years. In 1823 he 
was appointed Secretary of Lega- 
tion to Chili, but declined the posi- 
tion. He was elected to Congress 
in 1838, serving three terms in all, 
though in 1840 he was elector on 
the Harrison ticket. In 1846 he 
was again elected to the Maryland 
234 



3obn Pendleton ftenneDE. 

House of Delegates and was mad© 
Speaker. In 1850, during the ad- 
ministration of Mr. Fillmore, Mr. 
Kennedy became Secretary of the 
Navy, rendering permanent and 
valuable public service. On the 
election of Franklin Pierce Mr. 
Kennedy retired from public life, 
not losing, however, interest in pub- 
lic affairs, since he, like his kinsman, 
" Porte Crayon," opposed the dis- 
ruption of the Union in 1861. 

Mr. Kennedy's first marriage oc- 
curred in 1824. His wife was a 
daughter of Judge Tennant, of Bal- 
timore, and lived less than a year 
after marriage. Five years later 
he was married to Miss Elizabeth 
Gray, who survived him. This 
marriage was an extremely happy 
one during all the forty-one years 
which followed. Soon after this 
marriage he began to devote his 
evenings to more ambitious literary 
effort, though his days were sedu- 
lously occupied with legal business. 
235 



Sobn Pendleton IkenneD^. 

The frequent visits to Virginia, be- 
gun with his mother and continued 
by himself on various horseback 
journeys, now became a part of his 
life. In company with his wife he 
visited White Sulphur Springs or 
other portions of Virginia almost 
every summer. This gave him an 
intimate knowledge of the habits, oc- 
cupations, way of looking at things — 
in fact, the life of the people of the 
Old Dominion, dear to him as the 
abode of loving kindred and the 
scene where he first learned to love 
and survey nature. Added to this, 
the large hospitality, genial manners, 
and romantic history of a state of 
which he was half a native had al- 
ways been matters of deep interest 
to him. The rising lawyer and 
politician endeavored to portray 
these things as he saw them in a 
series of elaborate sketches. 

" Swallow Barn ; or, A Sojourn 
in the Old Dominion " appeared in 
1832. Simms published "Atalantis" 
236 



$obn fSenDleton fsenneos. 

the same year, and Martin Faber 
his first novel, a year later. Tuck- 
erman, in the "Life of John P. 
Kennedy," says : " When ' Swallow- 
Barn' first appeared few vivid and 
faithful pictures of American life 
had been executed. Paulding had 
described Dutch colonial life in 
New York; Tudor had published 
letters from New England ; Flint 
and Hall had given us graphic 
sketches of the West, toward which 
virgin domain the tide of emigra- 
tion had set; but, with the excep- 
tion of a few impressive and fin- 
ished legendary tales from the then 
unappreciated pen of Hawthorne 
and the genuine American novels, 
the 'Spy' and the 'Pioneer,' of 
Cooper, American authorship had 
scarcely surveyed, far less invaded, 
the rich fields of local tradition and 
native life. Accordingly 'Swallow 
Barn' met with a prompt and cor- 
dial reception. Emanating from a 
man of leisure, it was hailed as the 
237 



5obn penoleton H?enneo£. 

precursor of a series of works im- 
bued with the spirit and devoted 
to the illustration of our history, 
scenery, and manners. It was wel- 
comed by rare critical appreciation." 
"The style of 'Swallow Barn,'" 
said the New York Review, " is pol- 
ished and graceful ; its distinguish- 
ing feature is its pure Americanism. 
The story of Abe and the negro 
mother, for pathos and power, is not 
surpassed by anything that has yet 
appeared in the literature of our coun- 
try." " This," remarked the North 
American Review, then in its palmy 
days, " is a work of great merit and 
promise. It is attributed to a gen- 
tleman of Baltimore, already ad- 
vantageously known to the public 
by several productions of less com- 
pass and various styles. The pres- 
ent attempt proves that he combines 
with the talent and spirit he had 
previously exhibited the resources, 
perseverance, and industry that are 
necessary to the accomplishment 
238 



5obn ipendlstcn tzenncSy. 

of extensive works. We do not 
know that we can better express 
our friendly feelings for him than 
by expressing the wish that the 
success which this production has 
met with may induce him to with- 
draw his attention from other ob- 
jects and devote himself entirely to 
the elegant pursuits of polite litera- 
ture, for which his taste and talent 
are so well adapted, and in which 
the demand for labor — to borrow an 
expression from a science to which 
he is no stranger — is still more 
pressing than in law, political econ- 
omy, and politics." In " Swallow 
Barn " is portrayed a picture of the 
scenery, manners, and rural life of 
Virginia soon after the close of the 
Revolutionary war. Says the work 
under consideration : "Swallow 
Barn is an aristocratical old edifice 
which sits, like a brooding hen, on 
the southern bank of the James Riv- 
er." The author connects with 
this and the " Brakes," four miles 
2 239 



5obn penfcleton *foenne&E. 

down on the same side of the river, 
much of the free and cheerful life 
of that time. There are the swamps 
and superstitions; the woodcraft; 
the county court ; the plantation din- 
ner, with its table, wisdom, and 
mirth ; the pride, purity, improvi- 
dence, rhetoric, horsemanship, 
hunting, politics, humors, loves, 
and loyalty of native Virginian and 
visitor. A love-suit and a lawsuit 
are not forgotten, nor is the old mill, 
the spoiled old negro, the proud 
and high-spirited maiden, the crotch- 
ety and chivalric old man, the 
rides, the romps ; in fact, no detail 
is wanting to make complete the 
picture of those days of high hopes 
and quiet but perennial mirth which 
made an Arcadia of the glorious 
Old Dominion. No historian can 
afford to neglect the pages of 
" Swallow Barn." The book had a 
run, and brought its author much 
kindly recognition. Twenty years, 
and a new edition was called for. 
240 



3obn pen&leton IftenneOE* 

The demand has never ceased, Put- 
nams having brought out a new 
edition two years ago. 

In style Kennedy follows closely 
his friend Irving's "Bracebridge 
Hall," then ten years old and justly 
popular. In truth to local traits 
Kennedy perhaps excelled all who 
have entered upon a description of 
Virginia, though not a few have es- 
sayed that task, among whom may 
be named the original and pic- 
turesque John Smith ; Jefferson, in 
*« Notes on Virginia ; " Wirt's " Let- 
ters of a British Spy ; " Irving, in 
his " Life of Washington ; " Dr. 
Caruthers, in " Cavaliers of Vir- 
ginia," a work published in the 
same year as " Swallow Barn ; " 
Thackeray, in the " Virginians," of 
which Kennedy is said to have writ- 
ten the fourth chapter of the second 
volume while in Paris. 

In 1 8 19 Mr. Kennedy made a 
horseback journey from Augusta, 
Oa., through the western part of 
241 



5obn ipenDleton ftennedg. 

South Carolina. Seeking shelter 
for the night on one occasion, he 
encountered a remarkable man, and 
heard from his lips the story of his 
exploits at a critical period of the 
Revolution. This became the basis 
of " Horseshoe Robinson," one of 
the most thrilling romances which 
America has produced. We are 
told that the scenery, incidents, and 
characters are faithfully reproduced 
from the reality ; that, when in after- 
years the finished story was submit- 
ted to the hero, he said : " It's all true 
and right — in its right place — except- 
ing about them women, which I dis- 
remember." The time is in that dark 
period when the British arms had 
prevailed in the South, and a few 
patriots were holding fastnesses in 
mountain and swamp from which 
to harass British and Tory, that all 
might not be destroyed. The de- 
scription of the battle of King's 
Mountain has been regarded as one 
of the best ever written. " Horse- 
242 



5obn ©enDieton ftenned$. 

shoe Robinson" was published in 
1 836, and was received with marked 
favor. By another hand it was ef- 
fectively dramatized nearly a quar- 
ter of a century later. 

" Rob of the Bowl," Mr. Kenne- 
dy's third work, appeared in 1838, 
the year in which he was first 
^elected to Congress. No doubt his 
public services for the next few 
years cut short further excursions 
into the domain of romantic fiction. 
" Rob of the Bowl " describes the 
province of Maryland in the days 
of the second Lord Baltimore, when 
the capital was Port St. Mary's, on 
the left bank of St. Mary's River. 
The key-note is historical. The 
dangers, the problems, the jealous- 
ies, the smuggling, the bitter feuds 
between the Church of England 
and that of Rome — all are vividly 
brought out. The characters make 
strong figures as they are portrayed. 
Being at the storm-center of poli- 
tics, so to speak, his observations 
243 



Sobn penoleton Iftenne&B. 

revealed themselves in 1840 as 
" Quodlibet : Containing Some An- 
nals Thereof by Solomon Second- 
thought, Schoolmaster." Various 
phases of a partizan campaign are 
portrayed with ludicrous solemnity. 
" Memoir of the Life of William 
Wirt," in two volumes, by Kenne- 
dy, came from the press in 1849. 
During Mr. Wirt's practise at the 
Baltimore bar Mr. Kennedy had 
become his intimate friend. Mr. 
Wirt, rising from an obscure family 
and without a college education, had 
by patient study, noble ambition, 
generosity of heart, and grace of 
manner won his way to an honor- 
able position in his profession and 
a warm place in the hearts of his 
friends. Like Mr. Kennedy, he 
loved literature, had gifts in that 
field, and ever hoped to be able to 
turn aside from the arduous strug- 
gle involved by straitened cir- 
cumstances that he might attempt 
serious work in the field chosen 
244 



•Jobn H>enDleton IftenneDE. 

of his heart. His " Life of Patrick 
Henry," " Letters of a British Spy," 
and various sketches are only to- 
kens of that longing. On the death 
of Mr. Wirt, in 1834, Mr. Kennedy 
had delivered before the Maryland 
bar a eulogy on Wirt. This was a 
graceful and eloquent tribute which 
delighted his auditors and led, in 
course of time, to his selection as 
biographer. 

Mr. Kennedy took the Union 
side at the breaking out of the 
war. At the commenceinent of 
the third year he wrote a series of 
letters for the National Intelli- 
gencer. At the close of the war 
these were collected into a volume 
under the title of "Mr. Ambrose's 
Letters on the Rebellion." He con- 
tinued more or less interested in 
public affairs until his death, which 
occurred August 18, 1870. 

Some one has said of Mr. Ken- 
nedy : " His life is greater than his 
works." His correspondence was 
245 



5obn pen&leton *ftenneoE. 

extensive, and his addresses were 
of more than passing interest on 
account of the loftiness of tone and 
thought as well as the literary ex- 
cellence. He was ever ready with 
a word of encouragement for young 
people in their struggles and dis- 
couragements, and no one was more 
delighted in their successes. His 
letters to literary men ever flow 
with cordial encouragement. Their 
projects found in him a sympathet- 
ic supporter. Washington Irving 
and Kennedy took to each other on 
first acquaintance and this soon ri- 
pened into lasting friendship. Vis- 
its were exchanged, and their let- 
ters to each other were in the most 
cordial terms. There was a tone 
of pleasant banter mutually inter- 
changed between " Geoffrey Cray- 
on " and " My Dear Horseshoe." 
His pleasant letters to Willis, Pres- 
cott, Simms, J. R. Thompson, Poe, 
and others, showed his unvarying 
interest in American letters. Thack- 
246 



5obn fpenDIeton IkennefcE. 

eray and other literary nien visiting 
Baltimore found in him a ready co- 
adjutor. While Secretary of the 
Navy he fostered the expedition of 
Dr. Kane to the arctic seas as 
well as Commodore Perry's mis- 
sion to Japan. Richardson says : 
" Kennedy, like Paulding, filled the 
office of Secretary of the Navy, 
and well illustrated that union of 
wholesome manliness with bookish 
tastes which was beginning to be a 
characteristic of our literature. The 
turmoil of American politics has 
over and over again left place, in 
diplomatic service or public station 
at home, for historians, essayists, 
novelists, or poets, who also have 
been, like Kennedy, efficient and 
honored servants of their country 
and leaders of their party. . . . 
Had Kennedy's graceful pen been 
driven by a genius more forcefully 
creative, the result of his lifelong 
devotion to literature would have 
been considerable." 
247 



3obn Esten Coofte, 

A YOUNG lawyer of Rich- 
mond, Va., published a novel 
in 1853, the scene of which 
was laid in the Valley of Virginia, 
so soon to be shaken by the tread 
of armies and made famous with 
the blazonry of stirring deeds. The 
success of this first effort sufficed to 
take the author from the bar into 
the fields of romance. The story 
was " Leather Stocking and Silk," 
published by Harper & Brothers. 
The author's name was not then at- 
tached to the book, but was soon to 
grace the title-pages of other and 
better works. The "Virginia Co- 
medians," in two volumes, by John 
Esten Cooke, appeared in 1854. 
The same year was likewise pro- 
ductive of the " Youth of Jeffer- 
son," based on the letters of that 
statesman. The newly found pen 
248 



5obn jBsten Goofte, 

of the rising author was not allowed 
much rest, as " Ellie," a novel, was 
published at Richmond in the fol- 
lowing year. Again, the next year, 
the "Last of the Foresters" ap- 
peared from New York. The year 
1859 was signalized by the publica- 
tion of "Henry St. John, Gentleman," 
a tale of 1774-75, a se< l ue l to the 
" Comedians." In addition to these 
more ambitious works, the same 
facile pen had written regularly for 
Putnam's and Harper's Magazines, 
besides furnishing prose and verse 
for the Southern Literary Messen- 
ger^ around which even then clus- 
tered memories of Poe. 

These few years had been pro- 
lific, but Virginia called for her 
sons, and the pen was laid aside for 
the sword. The private became 
the captain, and served on the staff 
of Gens. Stuart and Pendleton. 
The heroic deeds which he wit- 
nessed thenceforward projected 
themselves into his best romances. 
249 



5obn Bsten Coolie. 

Capt. Cooke is far excellence the 
novelist as well as historian of the 
matchless campaigns of Lee and 
Jackson. 

John Esten Cooke was born at 
Winchester, Va., November 3, 1830. 
His father, John Rogers Cooke, 
was one of the most distinguished 
lawyers of Virginia, practising for 
more than forty years. During 
that time he took part in nearly all 
the great cases carried to the higher 
courts. In 1829 he was a member 
of the convention which framed the 
constitution of Virginia, and was a 
member of the committee which 
drafted that instrument, serving with 
Chief -Justice Marshall, ex-Presi- 
dent Madison, and John Randolph. 
Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, the 
uncle of John Esten, was a Federal 
soldier during the war, although his 
son-in-law was the brave and dash- 
ing Confederate cavalry leader, Gen. 
J. E. B. Stuart. John Esten Cooke's 
mother was Miss Maria, daughter 
250 



$obn Baten Coolie. 



of Philip Pendleton, of Martins- 
burg-, Va., and hence a sister of J. 
P. Kennedy's mother. Some one 
has claimed that the chief families 
of the Old Dominion are all re- 
lated. Who has not heard of the 
poem " Florence Vane ? " This has 
been translated into many languages, 
and has been set to music by cele- 
brated composers. Other poems by 
Philip Pendleton Cooke were very 
popular. "Froissort Ballads," and 
other poems, were edited by this 
brother of the younger novelist. 

Mr. J. E. Cooke's early boyhood 
was spent at " Glengary," his fa- 
ther's country-seat, in the Valley of 
Virginia. When he was ten years 
of age his father removed to Rich- 
mond to practise in the court of 
appeals. John Esten attended an 
ordinary Virginia school, his last 
teacher being Dr. Burke, of Rich- 
mond, an excellent teacher of lan- 
guages. He left school at the age 
of sixteen to study law with his fa- 
251 



3obn JEsten Coofce. 

ther, and was admitted to the bar 
before he was twenty - one. He 
seems to have practised three or 
four years, but, judging from the 
rapidity with which his books came 
from the press after the first was 
published, the disciple of Blackstone 
was already intent upon authorship. 
What leads a young man toward 
literary effort is often difficult to 
discover. The Southern Literary 
Messenger had attracted favorable 
notice. Some men of ability were 
among its contributors. William 
Wirt had dabbled in literature, his 
cousin Kennedy had entered the 
field of letters and plucked not a 
few laurels. Cooper had found 
fertile fields in the North, and Will- 
liam Gilmore Simms was busy with 
the legends and history of the 
South. 

This is Mr. Cooke's own version 

of his literary aspirations : " My 

aim has been to paint the Virginia 

phase of American society, to do 

252 



5obn ^Ssten Cooke* 



for the Old Dominion what Cooper 
has done for the Indians, Simms for 
the Revolutionary drama in South 
Carolina, Irving for the Dutch 
Knickerbockers, and Hawthorne for 
the weird Puritan life of New Eng- 
land." It is said that Irving exer- 
cised a strong spell over the imagi- 
nation of Cooke. Mr. Eugene L. 
Didier tells of a visit made to Irv- 
ing as one of the brightest recollec- 
tions of John Esten Cooke's life. 
From his youth he had admired 
" Geoffrey Crayon." " Bram Bones," 
" Rip Van Winkle," and " Ichabod 
Crane " had been real beings. How 
delightful, then, must have been an- 
ticipations of meeting with the vet- 
eran author at " Sunnyside ! " This 
is the story : The first sight of the 
object of his youthful admiration 
was certainly a disappointment. He 
was short and stout, and his coun- 
tenance gave no outward indication 
of the intelligence within. He 
looked more like a plain country 
253 



3-obn J&3ten Coolie. 

gentleman with a taste for raising 
the best breed of cattle or the big- 
gest turnips than a man possessing 
the rare literary taste of the author 
of the "Sketch Book." But it 
soon became apparent that there 
was more about the serene old gen- 
tleman than was seen at the first 
glance. The tranquillity of his man- 
ner was not the torpor of a dull in- 
tellect, but the repose of power. 
Ke was full of anecdotes of the au- 
thors and artists whom he had known 
during his long and varied expe- 
rience at home and abroad : Scott, 
Moore, x\llston, Leslie, G. P. R. 
James, Dickens, etc. He spoke of 
the frequent visits of Louis Napo- 
leon to " Sunnyside " on his way to 
West Point, when he was in Amer- 
ica in 1S39. He was very silent 
and reserved, but was perfectly well- 
bred. " Now he is an emperor ! ' 
exclaimed Irving. " What a strange 
world this ! I knew the empress 
when she was a little girl in Ma- 
254 



5ebn jSsten coofte. 

drid, and have often dandled her on 
my knee — Eugenie Montijo. I saw 
her afterward, when she was a 
grown girl, with remarkably fine 
head and beautiful bust and shoul- 
ders. She used to go to the fancy 
balls in Spain as a female mousque- 
taire. The last time I was in Wash- 
ington, and saw Calderon, the Span- 
ish minister, he said to me : ' Good 
heaven, Irving, think of it! little 
Eugenie Montijo an empress ! 
Hump ! hump ! ' " 

We are told that Mr. Cooke was 
possessed of a very attractive per- 
sonal appearance. He was of me- 
dium height, well-formed, and had 
dark features, fine eyes with win- 
ning expression, and that courtly 
grace which he was wont to de- 
scribe in the Old Virginia cavalier. 
A devoted student, he preferred 
that life to all others. What might 
have been his career or his choice 
of subjects but for the war it is, of 
course, difficult to surmise. He had 
3 255 



jobn Bsten Goofte. 



shown a preference for capital and 
brocade rather than for wigwam 
and cabin. The statesmen and beau- 
ties of picturesque old Williamsburg 
seem to have held a fascination for 
him. In and near the streets and 
mansions, the Raleigh Tavern, and 
the theater of what was once the 
Southern Boston, occurs the action 
of the " Virginia Comedians." Of 
the sequel to this work, " Henry 
St. John, Gentleman," James Wood 
Davidson says : " This again is a 
tale of pre- Revolutionary days, lo- 
cated principally in the county of 
Prince George, Va., and is full of 
the fire and iron of those times. A 
Southern critic has pronounced this, 
4 by great odds, the best American 
historical novel,' and there are 
weighty reasons for the opinion." 
Of this story, nearly a quarter of a 
century after the issuance of the 
first edition, its author wrote as fol- 
lows : " This era of fullest develop- 
ment was that chosen by the writer 
256 



3obn Ssten Goofce. 

ior his picture of Virginia society. 
It is the moment when all the fea- 
tures which distinguish the race are 
seen in the boldest relief. What 
precedes it is the period when the 
community, in process of forma- 
tion, has lived in and for itself. 
What follows it is the new age, 
when the colony has become a unit 
of the republic. That fact neces- 
sarily worked a very great change 
in society ; the new regime effaced 
the old ; and thus the years just 
preceding the final conflict with Eng- 
land present the fullest and most 
characteristic picture of the Virginia 
people. The turbulent old adven- 
turers had been succeeded by quiet 
citizens ; the rough swordsmen who 
had fought with Bacon against 
Charles II. by ruffled dignitaries — 
powdered planters, who lived in 
luxury on their estates amid swarms 
of dependents, administered justice 
in the county courts, watched over 
their Church as energetic vestry- 
257 



$obn JBetcn Coofte. 



men, sat as members of the burgess- 
es, and ruled society as its natural 
lords. The rough old society had 
thus flowered into what very much 
resembled an aristocracy ; but the 
student, looking closer, will see 
many traits to modify the picture. 
Under the surface of the pompous 
old k nabob ' was the obstinate man- 
hood of a strong race. His misfor- 
tune is that his critics have looked 
only at the surface. They have 
been blinded by that imposing ap- 
paratus of class distinctions, by 
what one might see anywhere in 
America at that time, the spectacle 
of superbly dressed men and wom- 
en in silks and laces rolling in their 
chariots, making formal Old World 
bows as they moved in the royal 
minuet, superbly conscious, one 
would say, that the world was made 
only for themselves. But all this 
splendor of living did not prevent 
the Virginia planter from being a 
type of the highest manhood. In 
258 



5obn Bsten Coo&e. 



all times he had stood up for his 
right as a freeman." 

At the beginning of the war 
John Esten Cooke entered the Con- 
federate army as a private, serving 
first in the artillery and afterward 
in the cavalry. He was on the 
staff of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart a large 
portion of the time, and took part 
in most of the battles fought in 
Virginia. At Lee's surrender he 
was inspector-general of the horse- 
artillery of the army of Northern 
Virginia. The highest encomiums 
have been passed upon his soldierly 
qualities, but his pen seems not to 
have been altogether idle even in 
those stirring times, since a sketch 
of Stonewall Jackson was published 
in Richmond in 1863, which proved 
to be his production, and which 
was enlarged in 1866 to " Life of 
Stonewall Jackson." At the close 
of the war Capt. Cooke returned to 
the Valley of Virginia, the home of 
his early childhood, and the scene 
259 



5obn Bsten Coofee. 

of much of the war drama where 
he had marched and fought with 
the " foot cavalry " of Jackson, and 
where "Jeb" Stuart's bold riders 
had fearlessly followed their lead- 
er's plume and song. 

In 1867 John Esten Cooke was 
most happily married to Miss Mary 
FrancesPage,and their home thence- 
forward was the " Briars," in the 
beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. 
His neighbors were the Nelsons, 
the Pages, the Randolphs, and oth- 
ers of the best families of Virginia. 
He lived and enjoyed until his death, 
in 1 886, the free and easy life of 
the Virginia gentleman — plenty of 
horses, plenty of dogs, with hunt- 
ing and fishing, reading and writing, 
to vary the monotony. He had 
ever been a lover of good books, 
and gathered around him a goodly 
collection. He keenly enjoyed the 
sport of hunting, and there was fine 
sport in the Shenandoah mountains, 
and fish abounded in the mountain 
260 



John Bsten Coolie* 

streams. Six o'clock in the morn- 
ing found him in the library, as he 
considered the early morning hours 
the best for literary work. 

The first book which Capt. Cooke 
published after the war was " Sur- 
ry of Eagle's Nest." This is said 
to have been written in the autumn 
of 1865, though no doubt much of 
the material had already been pre- 
pared. It is difficult to conceive 
how a more thrilling" war romance 
could be written. Pelham, Ashby, 
Stuart, Jackson, Lee — where could 
such actors be had for another 
drama? The story was not one 
which the novelist had dreamed, 
was not one whose materials had 
been gathered by reading or hear- 
say, but he recorded what he had 
seen Lee, Jackson, and Stuart do» 
and what he had heard them say. 
The author had " hung up a dingy 
gray uniform and battered old sa- 
ber," and proposed to tell the story 
for his children and grandchildren 
261 



5obn ^Esten Coofte. 



as they clustered in fancy about his 
knees. This was a work of love 
such as had fallen to the lot of few 
men. Says the writer : " I think 
those dear coining grandchildren 
will take an interest in my adven- 
tures. They will belong to the 
fresh, new generation ; and all the 
jealousies, hatreds, and corroding 
passions of the present epoch will 
have disappeared by that time. 
Simple curiosity will replace the 
old hatred, the bitter antagonism of 
the partizan will yield to the philo- 
sophic interest of the student, and 
the events and personages of this 
agitated period will be calmly dis- 
cussed by the winter fireside. How 
Lee looked and Stuart spoke, how 
Jackson lived that wondrous life of 
his, and Ashby charged upon his 
milk-white steed — of this the com- 
ing generations will talk, and I 
think they will take more interest 
in such things than in the most 
brilliant arguments about secession. 
262 



$obn TSsten Goo&e. 



Therefore, good reader, whom I 
will never see in the flesh, I am 
going to make some pictures, if I 
can, of what I have seen. Come ! 
Perhaps, as you follow me, }'OU 
will live in the stormy days of a 
convulsed epoch, breathe its fieiy 
atmosphere, and see its mighty 
forms as they defile before you in a 
long and noble line. To revive 
those days, surround you with that 
atmosphere, and reproduce those 
figures which have descended into 
the tomb, is the aim which I pro- 
posed to myself in writing these 



memoirs." 



It might seem that " Surry of 
Eagle's Nest " has too many war 
heroes to move easily, yet among 
them moves the hero, Col. Surry, 
the proud May Beverly, the brave 
Mordaunt, the delightful Violet 
Grafton, and a well-drawn villain, 
Fenwick. The pathos of the 
mighty struggle pours itself into 
the book as one by one Pelham, 
263 



5o"on JSsten Coofce. 



Ashby, Jackson, and Stuart fall in 
battle. We catch something of the 
sense of desolation which crept into 
the hearts of the survivors when so 
many heroes had perished. 

The story became popular imme- 
diately on publication, seven edi- 
tions being sold in a short time. 
The transition from " Surry of Ea- 
gle's Nest " to the " Life of Stone- 
wall Jackson " was easy, and was 
made the following year. The au- 
thor had now found his field, and 
deeds of heroic endeavor had found 
a faithful and enthusiastic chroni- 
cler. No wonder need be expressed 
that he should work a field which 
had proved so popular. In close suc- 
cession followed " Mohun," " Hilt 
to Hilt," " Hammer and Rapier," 
and "Wearing the Gray" — all writ- 
ten con amore by a man who knew 
what he wrote, and all having about 
them an atmosphere of chivalric 
deeds. A brief return to colonial 
Virginia occurs in " Fairfax ; or, 
264 



3obn Bsten Coofte. 

The Master of Green way Court," 
which appeared in 1868. The com- 
plaint is made that the old earl, who 
had always been a figure of interest, 
did not find in this case a historian 
who devoted a sufficient amount of 
time and attention to the elucidation 
of his subject. How could he re- 
turn to those earlier days with char- 
acters of larger proportions so near 
at hand? Complaint is made again 
that Virginia in the war hid from 
his vision all men and deeds not of 
her borders. 

John Esten Cooke must ever re- 
main preeminently the novelist of 
the war from the Southern stand- 
point. While ever an ardent South- 
erner, he wrote without bitterness.. 
Of the times when the Grays and 
Blues opposed each other he says : 
" I think of it without bitterness. 
God did it — God the almighty, the 
all- wise — for his own purpose. I do 
not indulge in repinings or reflect 
with rancor upon the issue of the 
265 



5obn Bsten Coofte. 



struggle. I prefer recalling the 
stirring adventures, the brave voices, 
the gallant faces ; even in that tre- 
mendous drama of 1864—65 I can 
find something besides blood and 
tears." 

Perhaps a complete bibliography 
of Capt. Cooke's works has not 
been made, but in addition to those 
already mentioned in this sketch 
the following may be found in Ap- 
pleton's "Cyclopedia : " " Out of the 
Foam " ( 1859) ; « The Heir of Gay- 
mount" (1870) ; "Life of Gen. R. 
E. Lee" (1S71); "Dr. Van Dyke, 
a Story of Virginia in the Last 
Century" (1872); "Her Majesty 
the Queen" (1873); "Pretty Mrs. 
Gaston, and Other Stories " (1874) ; 
"Justin Harley" (1874); "Cand- 
les, a Story of Cornwallis' Vir- 
ginia Campaign (1877) ; "Profess- 
or Pressensce, a Story" (1S7S); 
" Virginia Bohemians and Stories 
of the Old Dominion" (1S79) ; 
" Virginia : A History of the Peo- 
266 



5obn ^Ssten Coofte. 



pie," Boston (1883); "Maurice 
Mystery" (1885). 

Much of Cooke's writing lies 
scattered through the pages of va- 
rious periodicals, and has never 
been collected into book form. His 
" History of Virginia," for the Com- 
monwealth Series, is one of the 
most delightful volumes of that en- 
tire series, and is itself as wonder- 
ful as a romance. Just a short 
time before his death he said : " Mr. 
Howells and the other realists have 
crowded me out of the popular re- 
gard as a novelist, and have brought 
the kind of fiction I write into gen- 
eral disfavor. I do not complain of 
that, for they are right. They see, 
as I do, that fiction should faithful- 
ly reflect life, and they obey the 
law, while I was born too soon, and 
am now too old to learn my trade 
anew ; but in literature, as in every- 
thing else, advance should be the 
law, and he who stands still has no 
right to complain if he is left be- 
267 



3obn JBetcn Coofce. 



hind. Besides, the fires of ambition 
are burned out of me, and I am se- 
renely happy. My wheat-fields are 
green as I look out from the porch 
of the ' Briars,' the corn rustles in 
the wind, and the great trees give 
me shade upon the lawn. My three 
children are growing up in such 
nurture and admonition as their 
race has always deemed fit, and I 
am not only content but very happy, 
and much too lazy to entertain any 
other feeling toward my victors 
than one of warm friendship and 
sincere approval." Notwithstand- 
ing this admission against himself, 
the sale of his books, particularly 
his war stories, continues, and is 
likely to continue until the deeds 
they portray have faded much far- 
ther into the dim distance. Cooke 
did not altogether neglect poetry, 
though one poem by his brother 
outshines all that he wrote. 

Even while happy at the 
" Briars " amid his 2 ) ^ easan t sur- 
268 



5obn jEeten Coolie. 



roundings and with his wife, whom 
he found so like an angel, we can not 
but imagine him sometimes heaving 
a sigh and dropping a tear for his 
fallen comrades, particularly for the 
gallant Stuart, whose plumes he had 
so often seen waving in the desper- 
ate charge. No more fitting close 
can be made than to give a portion 
of Capt. Cooke's 

BEREA VED. 
Dear comrades, dead this many a day, 

I saw you weltering in your gore, 
After three days amid the pines 

On the Rappahannock shore, 
When the joy of life was much to me, 

But your warm hearts were more. 

You lived and died true to your flag, 
And now your wounds are healed, but 
sore 
Are many hearts that think of you 

Where you have gone before. 
Peace, comrade! God bound up those 
forms! 
They are whole forevermore! 

Those lips this broken vessel touched ; 
His, too, the man we all adore, 
269 



5obn ^Saten Coofte. 

That cavalier of cavaliers, 

Whose voice -will ring no more, 

Whose plume will float amid the storm 
Of battle nevermore ! 



Never was cavalier like ours, 
Not Rupert in the years before! 

And when his stern, hard work was 
done, 
His griefs, joys, battles o'er, 

His mighty spirit rode the storm 
And led his men once more. 

He lies beneath his native sod, 

Where violets spring or frost is hoar; 
He recks not; charging squadrons watch 

His raven plume no more, 
That smile we'll see, that voice we'll 
hear, 
That hand we'll touch no more! 
270 




®tber Soutbem 1Rot>eli0t0* 

! HE romance of history per- 
tains to no human annals more 
strikingly than to the early 
settlement of Virginia. The mind 
of the reader at once reverts to the 
names of Raleigh, Smith, and Po- 
cahontas. The traveler's memory 
pictures in a moment the ivy-man- 
tled ruin of old Jamestown." Thus 
wrote Dr. William A. Caruth- 
ers, in the year 1834, at the head 
of the first chapter of the " Cava- 
liers of Virginia." Dr. Caruthers 
was born in Virginia about the be- 
ginning of the century, and died at 
Savannah, Ga., where he had fol- 
lowed his profession for some years. 
He was a student of Washington 
College, Virginia, in 18 18, and after- 
ward was educated as a physician. 
The record of his works runs as 
follows : The " Cavaliers of Vir- 
ginia" (1834), the "Knights of 
the Horseshoe " (1845), tne " Ken- 
4 271 



Otbcr Soutbern novelists. 



tuckian in New York," and a " Life 
of Dr. Caldwell." He wrote for 
the Knickerbocker, of New York, 
and for the Magnolia and other 
Southern magazines. 

The " Cavaliers of Virginia " is 
a spirited historical romance, the 
scene of which is laid at Jamestown, 
in the days of Gov. Berkeley, and 
one of the chief actors is the brave, 
and — the world now says — patriotic 
Nathaniel Bacon. We have here 
brought to view pictures of cavalier 
and lady, savage and wilderness, 
with loves, hates, and jealousies, 
showing that the people who found- 
ed a great commonwealth were hu- 
man. At the close of the work 
we find the following "Addenda : " 
" Should the author's humble labors 
continue to amuse his countrymen, 
he will very soon lay before them 
the * Tramontane Order ; or, The 
Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,' 
an order of knighthood in the Old 
Dominion which first planted the 
British standard beyond the Blue 
272 



Qtbct Soutbem floveltets. 



Mountains." As we have seen, it 
was more than ten years before he 
fulfilled the promise of the "Adden- 
da." Perhaps his work did not 
" amuse his countrymen " of Vir- 
ginia, as he seems to have left the 
state, first for Alabama, afterward 
settling in Georgia. In course of 
time came the " Knights," and we 
could not very well spare the 
" Cocked Hat Gentry," since much 
of the story is history in which the 
real names of the actors are given. 
Spotswood and his followers found 
it necessary to shoe their horses for 
the first time after leaving the soft 
soil of the tide-water region. This 
became the emblem of knighthood 
on their return. To the peerless 
riders who with him had laid open 
the fair valley of Virginia Gov. 
Spotswood presented ornaments of 
gold wrought into the shape of 
horseshoes. The inscription on one 
side was, " Tramontane Order ;" on 
the other, u Sic juvat transcendere 
monies." The literary instinct was 
273 



©tber Soutbern movelfeta. 



strong in Dr. Caruthers. Although 
his house and books were burned, 
he continued to gather material, and 
brought out his works at a time when 
his people were not clamoring very 
loudly for an output of literature. 

Nathaniel Beverly Tucker 
is said to have excelled any of his 
Virginia contemporaries as a writer. 
His novel, the " Partizan Leader,'* 
made quite a sensation. It was 
first published in 1836, but was sup- 
pressed for political reasons. The 
work was privately printed with a 
date twenty years in advance of the 
time of publication, and tells by an- 
ticipation almost exactly what took 
place a little more than twenty years 
later. The story opens when the 
South and North have separated, 
and gives pictures of Virginia occu- 
pied by troops, as happened during 
the war between the states. The 
book was printed in New York in 
1 861 by those hostile to the South 
to prove that secession had been 
prearranged for a quarter of a cen- 
274 



©tber Soutbetn *£loveligts. 



tury. The reprint was called a 
" Key to the Disunion Conspiracy." 
Beverly Tucker, as he was usually 
called, was the author of one other 
novel, " George Balcombe," besides 
essays and various law publications. 
He was born in 1784, and died in 
1 85 1. He was educated at William 
and Mary, and practised law in Mis- 
souri, where for a time he was 
judge of the circuit court. Re- 
turning to Virginia, he was elected 
Professor of Law in William and 
-Mary in 1834, and held the place 
until his death. Nathaniel Beverly 
was the second son of St. George 
Tucker, and half - brother of John 
Randolph. His father had written 
one notable poem, as we have seen 
elsewhere, besides dramas, satirical 
odes, essays on slavery, and various 
works on law. 

Since a large number of the 
Tuckers have been literary men as 
well as jurists, it will simplify the 
matter to say : St. George, the fa- 
ther of Nathaniel Beverly, was born 
275 



Qtber Soutbetn IRcveKste. 



in Bermuda Island in 1S52, came to 
Virginia to receive his education, 
and finally settled there, bearing- 
arms in defense of the colonies in 
1777. The following year he was 
married to Frances Bland, the moth- 
er of John Randolph. George 
Tucker, jurist, essayist, and novel- 
ist, was a relative, and was edu- 
cated by St. George. He was the 
author of numerous works, inclu- 
ding a novel, the " Valley of the 
Shenandoah," which was reprinted 
in England, and translated into Ger- 
man. Henry St. George, the 
elder brother of Nathaniel Beverly, 
was a jurist, author of various law 
publications, judge, and member of 
Congress. The third son of Hen- 
ry St. George, St. George, Jr,, 
died from exposure in the seven 
days' battles around Richmond. 
He was the author of " Hansford, 
a Tale of Bacon's Rebellion," pub- 
lished at Richmond before the war. 
One writer for youth should not 
be omitted from this collection, 
27G 



©tber Soutbern 'Uovelists* 



though his works are so well known 
that an extended notice is unneces- 
sary. Francis Robert Gould- 
ing was a native of Georgia, and 
was born September 28, 18 10, in 
Liberty County, near Midway. He 
died August 21, 1881, and is bur- 
ied at Roswell, Ga. Dr. Goulding 
graduated in the University of Geor- 
gia, at Athens, in 1830, and finished 
the course in the Presbyterian The- 
ological Seminary at Columbia, 
S. C, in 1833. The failure of his 
voice debarred him from preaching, 
and he became a writer of books, 
being surprised at his own success. 
A desire to instruct and amuse his 
own children caused him to com- 
mence the " Young Marooners " in 
1847. The work was not com- 
pleted until 1850, and was two more 
years in finding a publisher. It 
was declined in New York and 
neglected for a time in Philadelphia, 
until on one occasion the one who 
passes upon the manuscript in such 
cases chanced to make a casual ex- 
277 



©tber Southern IRoveUsts. 



amination of the " Young Maroon- 
ers," as the work was called, after 
having been named two or three 
times. The passing glance of the 
manuscript - reader deepened into 
intense interest, and the work was 
brought out at once. Three edi- 
tions were issued the first year, and 
it was soon reprinted in England 
and Scotland by at least half a doz- 
en houses. Some one called it a 
" Crusoic book for boys, and the 
best of its class." Be it boy or 
man who begins the story, he is 
likely to finish, and then procure 
" Marooner's Island," a sequel, pub- 
lished in 1868. These works have 
been a source of pleasure and profit 
to thousands of young people in 
both America and England. Dr. 
Goulding's other works are : " Lit- 
tle Josephine " (1848), "Confeder- 
ate Soldier's Hymn-Book " (1863), 
44 Little Boy" (1869), and the 
"Woodruff Stories" (1870). 

If we take popularity as the cri- 
terion of merit, the women of the 
278 



©tbet Soutbern IRovelisis. 



South have not been second to the 
men as novelists, though how much 
literature has been produced poster- 
ity must determine. It is said that 
ninety-three thousand volumes of 
Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz's sto- 
ries were sold in three years. Her 
nativity was Massachusetts, but she 
resided several years at Chapel 
Hill, N. C, where her husband 
was professor in the college. They 
lived in various Southern States, 
chiefly Alabama, Florida, and Geor- 
gia, and were engaged in teaching. 
Her work was done in the South, 
and her sympathies were ever South- 
ern. Perhaps the best known of 
her publications were the " Mob 
Cap" and "Aunt Patty's Scrap 
Bag." Some of her other works 
were " Marcus Warland " and the 
"Planter's Northern Bride." Her 
view of the condition of the slave 
was very diverse to that expressed 
in " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

A remarkable case of sowing in 
tears and reaping in gladness is 
279 



©tber Soutbern Boveltets. 



shown in the account given by Mrs. 
E. D. E. N. Southworth of how 
she wrote "Retribution" while in 
charge of a school difficult to man- 
age, and with her child at the door 
of death. Beginning with this in 
1849, a long train of sensational sto- 
ries followed in rapid succession. 

As various publications have con- 
tinued to come from the pen of 
" Marion Harland " in recent years, 
one can hardly realize that her first 
work, "Alone," came from the press 
in 1854. This for a time required 
a new American edition every few 
weeks, was reprinted in England, 
and translated into French. As 
"Hidden Path," "Moss Side," 
" Nemesis," " Miriam," "At Last," 
" Helen Gardner," and many oth- 
ers, came from a busy pen, hardly 
one reached a sale of less than ten 
thousand within a year after publi- 
cation. Mrs. Mary Virginia 
Terhune (" Marion Harland") is 
the daughter of Samuel P. Hawes, 
who was a merchant of Richmond, 
280 



©tber Soutbern ftlcvelfsts* 



Va. In 1856 she was married to 
Rev. E. P. Terhune, who was then 
a Virginia pastor, but afterward 
took work in New Jersey. 

Possibly no American writer of 
fiction has had so many readers as 
Mrs. Augusta Jane Evans Wil- 
son. Although yet living, she has 
not published anything for some 
years. She has not been a prolific 
writer, but her works have had 
large sales. Mrs. Wilson was born 
at Columbus, Ga., May 8, 1835. On 
her mother's side she was descended 
from the Howards, one of the most 
honorable families of the state. 

Her mother was to a large ex- 
tent her teacher. When she was 
scarcely ten years of age her fa- 
ther moved to San Antonio, Tex. 
The Alamo and its gloomy story 
made a deep impression upon the 
tender child, hence " Inez, a Tale 
of the Alamo," was written when 
the author was fifteen. The Har- 
pers published this story in 1855. 
Four years later her " Beulah " ap- 
281 



Otbct Soutbern Iftoveltets. 



peared. This has been said to be 
her own life story. However that 
may be, " Beulah " ran through 
many editions in a few months. 
James Wood Davidson says : "The 
author of c Beulah ' was styled the 
Charlotte Bronte 1 of America. The 
compliment had some meaning in 
it." " Macaria " was published at 
Richmond in 1863, and was, per- 
haps, the first Southern war novel 
of the late war. Of course the sub- 
ject and the times would have made 
it popular, had the writer not al- 
ready reached her triumph. " St. 
Elmo," the much praised and much 
read, but also much censured, ap- 
peared in 1866. The little heroine 
knew so much, the hero was so 
strange, the language was so " high- 
flown!" Nevertheless, the book 
brought the author large returns. 
Her succeeding works are : " Vash- 
ti," " Infelice," and "At the Mercy 
of Tiberius." " Beulah " Evans, as 
she was sometimes called, was mar- 
ried to Mr. L. M. Wilson, of Mo- 
282 



©tber Soutbern l&ovelfets* 



bile, Ala., in 1868. She resided 
near that city, in a beautiful home 
bought with the sales of her books, 
until the death of her husband, when 
she took up her residence in Mobile. 
While much of the writings of 
ante-bellum times is considered by 
the reader of to-day a dreary waste 
of uninteresting pages, one must 
not imagine that these pages do not 
contain here and there wide patches 
of the bluest skies, the glintings of 
the mountain stream, the dewy fra- 
grance of sun- kissed flowers, and 
the ecstatic songs of Southern birds, 
as well as the genial life of a people 
of a now half - remembered past. 
Many of the works mentioned in 
the preceding pages have no inter- 
est except as way-marks to show 
by what stages of effort our people 
have reached their present status in 
literature. Some will have interest 
only to the historian and to the stu- 
dent who keep track of the social 
conditions of a people in their va- 
rious stages of progress. Others 
283 



©tbec Soutbern IRovcltets. 



will command a measure of interest 
as long as the world cares for 
dauntless deeds of high emprise, 
and for men of sincere convictions 
with noble courage and true chival- 
ry. To the one who reads for pas- 
time or merely to catch the transient 
phases of current life, most of these 
works are not even names. Liter- 
ature has come to be a business, 
and the newer writers have caught 
the artistic form in a higher degree. 
In fact, the art of the seer is often 
in higher repute than his vision and 
message. But we appreciate the 
fact that the successors to these pio- 
neers in the South know how to 
handle the tools of their craft to a 
better advantage both as to the form 
and body of their thought, and that 
they are gathering the golden grains 
of a wider and richer harvest. 

"And slowly answered Arthur from the 
barge: 
'The old order changeth, yielding place 
to new.'" 

284 






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